A Stranger City

I really enjoyed this book - I thought it was a murder mystery at the start but it soon wanders off in different directions with a cast of characters, who all have the kind of connections you can get in cities. An overheard conversation on a train sees us leaving the character we thought we were following as if we decided to leave them and wander after the stranger we just saw...
It's not a fun book - there's little humour here and the bleakness sets in. On occasion it wanders into fantasy (or does it? That's the question) and the conclusion of one character's story is disatisfyingly unreal.
The book ends where it started and I think I'd have preferred the central mystery unsolved, it risks becoming an info dump that doesn't add anything. There are times too when the dialogue is clunky (the opening chapter, for example) and I wonder (as I often do nowadays) where the editor was on this.
But despite the niggles, it was a book that kept me engaged and an introduction to an author I don't know.