Red planet blues / by Robert J. Sawyer.

The first ten chapters were originally published in slightly different form as the novella 'Identity Theft' in Down these Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick, published by Science Fiction Book Club, 2005.

Alex Lomax is the one and only private eye working the mean streets of New Klondike, the Martian frontier town that sprang up 40 years ago after Simon Weingarten and Denny O'Reilly discovered fossils on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, where anything can be synthesized, the remains of alien life are the most valuable of all collectibles, so shiploads of desperate treasure hunters stampeded to Mars in the Great Martian Fossil Rush. Trying to make an honest buck in a dishonest world, Lomax tracks down killers and kidnappers among the failed prospectors, corrupt cops, and a growing population of transfers - lucky stiffs who, after striking paleontological gold, upload their minds into immortal android bodies. But when he uncovers clues to solving the decades-old murders of Weingarten and O'Reilly, along with a journal that may lead to their legendary mother lode of Martian fossils, God only knows what he'll dig up...