Steven Gould's novel Blind Waves is set in the near future. The melting polar ice caps have permanently flooded the coastal regions and displaced millions of people. America has coped with the disaster by building floating cities and strictly enforcing anti-immigration laws. To enforce the anti-immigration laws, Congress has merged the Coast Guard with Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to prevent foreigners from entering the somewhat shrunken U.S.A.

Patricia Beenan lives on a floating city called New Galveston and operates a small submarine for performing underwater salvage and inspections. One day, she finds a newly-sunken ship. Hoping to find something salvageable, she instead the bodies of a bunch of dead people who had been locked in the ships hold. Suspecting that the deaths are the result of a rogue operation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), she notifies several members of the government, including her mother who's a congressman. She then has to dodge an overly persistent INS boat to get back to New Galveston.

The INS sends one of their top internal affairs investigators, Thomas Beckett, to question Patricia. She's initially distrustful of him, but warms up to him over a Mexican dinner. By the time she's known him for two days, they're madly in love with each other, but rogue INS agents on New Galveston are out to get them. Thomas and Patricia dodge bullets, knives, and bombs as they try to find out what's behind the attacks. The corruption in INS may stretch farther than they thought as they try to stop the evil plot being hatched by the rogue INS members.

Blind Waves is a highly entertaining science fiction read. There aren't any space ships or ray guns; what we do have is a very original premise based in the near future that combines elements of a thriller with a whodunit.

-- T.J. Powers