Sanctuary

Imagine a world without plastic. Imagine a world where something in the environment eats plastic. Imagine arriving on such a world in a space ship. The human colonists in Allen Steele's Sanctuary don't have to imagine it-they have to survive it. After traveling light years to the Earth-like planet of Tau Ceti-e, they have only minutes to abandon ship before the native plastic-eating organism turns their space ship into a death trap of orbiting debris. Now they'll have to survive an 18th-century way of life with the forbearance of the not-exactly hostile-but definitely not friendly-natives. Why do the native Cetans keep humanity confined to one poor island? Why do they so hate and mistrust the humans? What is going on? Private eye Jeremy Crowe finds himself caught up in the underground search for the truth, stuck on a middling rung in the modern caste system, and struggling to not make humanity's desperate situation any worse.
Fighting for his life may turn out to be the easy part. Reviews: "Steele pulls off an unusual genre-bending adventure in this mélange of far-future alien-human interaction and classic gumshoe investigation.. Steele's engaging tough-guy narrator and well-wrought alien culture make this an enjoyable romp for both science fiction and detective story fans." -Publishers Weekly