The third Greg Mandel novel finds Hamilton straining the limits of his post-Warming, post socialist tyrany, hi-tech world of psychics and corporate espionage: suddenly we have an alien flower and visits to space. This is a thriller more in the vein of the first Mandel novel, Mindstar Rising, than the formal murder-mystery of the second. That's probably why I prefer the middle novel: Hamilton is at his best when writing detective stories.