Buried Deep

Kristine Kathryn Rusch 2005 Buy from Amazon.com

With this Retrieval Artist novel, Rusch reintroduces alien culture in a way that she hasn’t in the previous two novels, Consequences and Extremes. The Disty are difficult to communicate with, with complex and arcane rituals around death, and renowned for the ritual vengeance killings that are allowed under Alliance law. They also control Mars, and the humans living there are subject to their laws.

When a female skeleton is found under a Disty construction site in Sahara Dome, forensic anthropologist Aisha Costard travels from earth to help identify and date the remains. It is only after she has started her work that she learns that the Disty now regard her and everyone who has been in contact with the bones as contaminated, and unless they find the family of the dead woman to perform decontamination rituals, they will all be killed.

Costard hires Miles Flint to track down any surviving relatives after they discover that the woman was a Disappeared. He realises quickly that this case is almost impossible, but as he continues to research, a larger problem emerges. The Disty asked the humans to confirm that the burial site had no more bodies, but they find hundreds more lower down.

Suddenly it becomes a crisis as the Disty react to their fear of contamination and try to flee first Sahara Dome and then Mars itself, spreading the contamination and causing a breakdown in relations between humans and Disty. There is a strong chance that there will be war. Noelle DeRicci has recently been promoted to Chief of Moon Security and she must deal with the potential arrival and contamination from Disty refugees while defending herself against attack by Ki Bowles, an ambitious reporter.

This novel was very fast-paced, as all the Retrieval Artist novels have been, but it had a feel of ever cascading disaster. It seemed to go from a group of people facing ritual torture and death, to a city in panic, to possible war and destruction of the human race. I started to wonder how it could all be tied by the end of the novel, and yet it was beautifully done.

The only thing that disappointed me a little was the disappearance of one new character, Detective Bartholomew Nyquist. He appears only a few times in the investigation of a murder on the moon. Nyquist and DeRicci seem to immediately click, and have similar styles. I hope he shows up again in later Retrieval Artist novels.