James Corey - Leviathan Wakes

In James S. A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes, the first book of The Expanse series, humanity has colonized the solar system, creating a tense political standoff between the "Inners" of Earth and Mars and the marginalized "Belters" living in the asteroid belt. The story follows two protagonists whose paths converge in a vast and dangerous conspiracy. The first protagonist is Jim Holden, the idealistic executive officer of an ice miner. When he and his crew discover an abandoned ship, they stumble upon a terrifying secret that sets off a chain of events threatening to plunge the solar system into war. Meanwhile, grizzled Detective Joe Miller works a missing-person case on the asteroid station of Ceres. His obsessive search for a runaway heiress named Julie Mao eventually leads him to the same abandoned ship and the secret Holden discovered. As the two men reluctantly team up, they uncover a chilling plot involving a deadly alien "protomolecule" that forces them to confront a threat beyond anything humanity has ever faced.