When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary decaying city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it look like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But, as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far more unusual, and far more deadly, than anything he would of imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other