Kristine Kathryn Rusch
****
This is my second "Recovery Artist" novel and I'm afraid I'm hooked. Recovery Man is a better book, but this one was pretty good as well. Rusch's series is a kind of thought experiment concerning multi-culturalism; the role of networked information and database technologies in a world of reduced privacy, advanced bio-tech; and impersonal, unjust law (at least by human standards). This last is what makes the retrieval artists necessary.
The main conflict in the story is between the Disty, an inscrutible alien race, whose customs and beliefs are very foreign to human understanding, and human customs and beliefs. Disty beliefs and rituals concerning death generate behavior that is "virus like" Beliefs about "contamination" and burials lead to behavior that is irrational by human standards, and deadly for both races.
Miles Flint saves the day with sophisticated search techniques that uncover the solution to "decontaminating" some burials on Mars. The plot is fairly tight, the characterization fully developed, and the evocation on a future world well done. This is a good series.
