The author of Jumper returns with a near-future SF novel, set in an America whose coastline has been drowned by melting Antarctic ice. In the world where hundreds of millions of people have been displaced from their homes by the Deluge--a hundred-foot-rise in sea level from melting ice caps--Partricia Beenan is lucky. She is still an American citizen with the right to live on the continent, unlike so many "wetfoots" whose homes lie deep under the waves or the refugees from nations now completely under water. But Patricia's father chose to live on a floating city of New Galveston, instead of following his congresswomen wife to Washington, and go into the underwater salvage business. Now, several years after his death, it's Patricia's business and her city. She's a wealthy woman, on the city council, well known to local INS commander and the New Galveston police. But none of that will help Patricia when she stumbles across a recently sunken freighter that has dozens of bodies chained up in its hold and clear evidence that it has been fired upon by an INS ship. Patricia's evidence of a rogue operation within the INS brings her together with Thomas Beckett, a government investigator assigned to the case. Romance blossoms while they pursue and are pursued by the killers, into the heart of the conspiracy. Steven Gould's Blind Waves is one of those books that makes you hold your breath a lot. This SF thriller takes place along what's left of the Texas Gulf coast after melting Antarctic ice has drowned much of the world. In New Galveston, a floating city, our plucky heroine Patricia Beeman uses her submarine to do salvage and inspection work. But when she stumbles upon a sunken ship full of freshly dead immigrants, she gets tangled in a dangerous web of politics, hatred, and corruption. Enter Commander Thomas Becket of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now an armed force bigger than the Navy). Patricia and Thomas band together to beat the bad guys, and the adventure that follows delivers on all counts. Plenty of tense underwater action and zingy plot twists will keep thriller fans turning pages, while snappy dialogue, a delightfully budding romance, and homages to Shakespeare and Dorothy L. Sayers add literary flair. --Therese Littleton In a world drastically changed by melting ice caps, salvage operator Patricia Beenan discovers a sunken ship containing 50 manacled corpses. Suspecting a government cover-up, she flees for her life only to discover an unlikely ally in Commander Thomas Beckett, an immigration officer assigned to investigate the deaths. Love, intrigue, and Shakespeare combine in this fast-paced sf adventure by the author of Jumper. A good choice for large sf collections. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Twenty-first-century Earth has fallen to the Deluge, a rising of sea levels due to melting ice caps that has forced hundreds of millions to move, dislocating societies all over the world. In the floating city of New Galveston, Patricia Beenan makes a reasonable living as a salvage diver. But one day she finds a sunken freighter with a hold full of chained corpses. She immediately becomes the object of deadly pursuit by those on whose secret she has stumbled--a secret involving the future of humanity and even of life on Earth, which is more than enough to make her pursuers ready to kill. The rest of the book is largely a long series of chase scenes in its exotic setting. Gould does it all well enough, as rather a short Tom Clancy novel mixed with the movie Waterworld . The numerous literary quotations may seem dragged-in to some, but most readers will keep flipping pages. Roland Green Antarctic volcanoes have caused the polar ice to melt, raising sea levels by a hundred feet: as a consequence, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is now the second largest branch of the US armed forces. Patricia Beenan, a relatively wealthy American, lives on the floating city of New Galveston, two hundred miles off the coast, where she operates an underwater salvage business among the drowned cities of what was once the Texas shoreline. During her latest job, Patricia discovers a freighter, deliberately sunk by large-caliber gunfire, whose chained hold contains the systematically robbed bodies of would-be immigrants. Also aboard are two crew members and an INS serviceman. Afraid that the INS itself did the deed, Patricia flees in her submarine; though pursued by the INS fast patrol craft Sycorax, with its state-of-the-art electronic systems, she manages to evade capture. Back at New Galveston, she meets investigator Commander Thomas Becket, to whom shes immediately attracted despite his scarred face. The circumstances notwithstanding, the two trust each other, and romance blossomsthough a squad of gunmen then attempts to assassinate the couple. Patricia detects a bomb on her submarine; Thomas discovers that Sycoraxs all-white crew has connections to racist terrorists; and that