The premise of The City and the City is fascinating: two overlapping cities functioning as separate countries, separated by a cross-hatched border. Residents are taught from a young age to unsee what happens in the other half, the separation policed by a mysterious higher power, Breach.

Knowing China Melville’s legendary status as a leftist author, I was expecting this to go in the direction of political satire, as the setting would lend itself so well to problematising borders, or perhaps more broadly our collective capacity to pretend not to see. Instead, I would firmly place the plot in the crime novel genre and, I must say, not in a particularly satisfying way. I did not find the characters fully fleshed-out or convincing, I did not think the twists were particularly well constructed, and I wasn’t dying to know who did it. I was also disappointed at how pro-cops the book was, given my aforementioned expectations. Did I miss something?