Beast-Jewel of Mars

Mars has been conquered by Earth's corporations, its ancient canals drained for profit. But the red planet has one weapon left: a drug called Shanga, the Going Back, that opens the mind to terrible, beautiful truths the Martians learned millennia ago. Former starship captain Burk Winters didn't come to Mars for answers. He came because his girlfriend Jill Leeland is dead, and the official story stinks like canal rot. Now he's chasing her into the poisoned heart of the canal cities, where the air is thin, the stakes are lethal, and everyone has something to hide. What he finds will make him question whether the woman he loved was ever real, whether Earth has the right to own a world, and whether some doors, once opened, can never be closed. Brackett writes Mars the way Chandler wrote Los Angeles: as a place where every sunset is a threat and every pretty face might be your death. This is planetary romance with a noir soul.