Second paragraph of third chapter:

It did, and Mariucci spent a moment silently apologising to Forsyth for thinking ill of him: the man’s faults might run deep, but he wasn’t deliberately malicious.

A very Clarkean book, very reminiscent of 2010 in that it’s about astronauts investigating strange stuff in the outer solar system in the middle of a massive crisis on Earth. I thought it was very well executed, with two believably flawed viewpoint characters and an intriguingly grim ending. Apparently it is a loose sequel to a previous book, Gallowglass, which I have not read, but I don’t think I missed much by not having read it. I liked this a lot. You can get it here.