The Well-Built City Trilogy

The Physiognomy opens Jeffrey Ford's trilogy set in the Well-Built City, ruled by the tyrant Drachton Below and investigated by Cley, a physiognomist whose job is to judge people's character and guilt by reading their facial features, a pseudo-science the city treats as law. The trilogy continues through Memoranda and The Beyond as Cley's certainties about the city and his own profession come apart. Ford, known for blending fantasy with literary allusion and dark humor, builds the series around one recurring narrator across all three books.