Rich earth girl Julie runs away to the asteroid belt and the goes missing. Tired out Belter police detective Miller is hired to find her. And dishonorably discharged Earth ex military Holden and his ragtag water hauler crew come across a ship in distress under mysterious circumstances. All three stories tie together throughout, as Holden, Miller, and the reader slowly discover what really happened to Julie, what the shady corporation Protogen is up to, and whether all out war between Earth, Mars, and the belt can be avoided.

I liked the book ok and it had a lot of interesting ideas, but Holden and Miller ended up feeling a bit too similar to me so the whole thing felt kind of like a sci fi noir detective story told by monotonous stubborn old men with little variation in tone. Desperately needed more from Julie or some other different tone of voice to break it up, especially in the middle where the details dragged on a bit.

Apparently there are sequels, and I'm mildly interested in what happens next, but neither the characters nor the cultural setting really grabbed hold of me enough to make me really care. I'd recommend Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" series instead for slightly post human SF, or Brin's original Uplift trilogy for the human struggle to evolve past the solar system.