James Lovegrove's "Days" (1997) was well received and shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. "The Foreigners" is a more traditional blend of SF and police procedural thriller; well written, inventive and with an exotically detailed "New Venice" setting.
The Foreigners are enigmatic, seven-foot alien tourists whose presence has halted ecological collapse and transformed Earth. They come with gifts, including free, non-polluting power and a new structural material which--coaxed by music--grows into buildings of glittering crystal. No one knows what's inside their golden robes and masks.
All the Foreigners ask is music and song... though there is something worrying about their shuddering, ecstatic response to the highly paid human "Sirens" who compete to sing for them. No physical contact, but somehow it reeks of prostitution. Lovegrove says he was inspired by the Thai sex-tourism industry that sees Westerners as "walking cashpoints, there to be milked and bilked".
When a dead Siren and a Foreigner's emptied robes are found in a plush hotel, it suggests something sordid--maybe a suicide pact? The investigator is London detective Jack Parry, transferred to the Foreign Policy Police that struggles to prevent anti-alien fanatics from scaring our benefactors away. As FPP publicity disasters follow thick and fast, Parry finds himself more personally entangled in the case than he could have imagined.
Connoisseurs of SF detective puzzles will probably be ahead of Parry by the halfway mark, but Lovegrove has extra surprises up his sleeve. A grippingly told story of an ingeniously imagined future. --"David Langford"