In The Cube

Twenty-first century Boston serves as the gateway to Earth for aliens and has become a technological marvel where humans and aliens mix, struggling to create a new society while coping with greed, immense wealth, and murder

In late 21st-century Boston, the sea has engulfed much of the present-day city, leaving its citizens to live in a gigantic cube-shaped megastructure of corridors twisting through the layered town. Having seceded from the U.S., Boston is now a bustling interplanetary spaceport. Private detective Beverly O'Meara and her alien partner, Akktri, whose inhumanly sharp senses allow him to find otherwise undetectable clues, have been hired to locate the missing daughter of a high-ranking city official. Their adventure-filled search takes them among aliens and humans of every description, from the highest (literally), wealthiest levels of Boston society to its lowest, poorest stratum in "Boston's Basement." The detectives make an appealing team; Akktri, though thoroughly alien, is especially sympathetic. The real star, though is Smith's ( Homecoming ) painstakingly constructed future Boston. If occasionally the plot is swamped by the wealth of evocative detail, Smith's city is interesting enough to compensate for the descriptive overflow. Readers will find this enjoyable, well-crafted book in the tradition of Asimov's The Caves of Steel.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Science-fiction detective yarn set in a medium-future Boston literally crawling with weird aliens: Smith's hardcover debut. Twenty-first-century Boston has been the site of momentous events: alien contact (involving dozens of species) and the establishment of an interstellar portal, the US government's challenge of Boston's subsequent monopoly of interstellar trade, a dreadful siege followed by independence from the US in all but name. Physically, the city has become a gigantic enclosed cube, outside of which most residents never venture. Now, Diana, the adopted daughter of City Operator Iris Sherwood, has gone missing; Sherwood calls in private detective Beverley O'Meara and her partner, Akktri, a furry alien Phner. Despite her misgivings (Beverley blames Sherwood for the death of her father during the Siege), Beverley takes the job--and immediately earns the enmity of persons high up in the Boston power structure; she learns that what seemed to be a case of kidnap and blackmail actually hinges on a mother/daughter love/hate relationship. In resolving the case, Beverley gains new insights into her Phner partner and his alien motivations. Hard-working, inventive, and colorful, but also uncontrolled- -with far too many different aliens, improbable sleuthing, and a general air of futuristic soap opera. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.