Mindstar Rising is the best cyberpunk novel you've never read. Peter F Hamilton is better known for his sprawling space operas, but in Mindstar he presents a tight thriller set in an intriguing post-global warming England coming out of a 10 year Left Totalitarian government. Greg Mandel is a private detective with little extra, a military-grade neural implant that lets him read minds, and a simple investigation into sabotage on a space station draws him into a dizzying world of corporate intrigue, hacking, and economic warfare.

This is a first novel, but Hamilton is humble enough to leave open questions about technology, human enhancement, and corporate power, rather than try to answer them once and for all. The novel is rife with the minor details that flesh out a good setting, like the medieval street markets next to shops turned into houses, or the new April in post-global warming England. Hard sci-fi fanatics might quibble at some things (laser pistols don't work like that, computer hacking isn't like that, socialists aren't like that, etc), but I don't care. The setting smells right, and unlike his other novels, Hamilton ends this one without the old deus ex machina.