Mercury is the latest in Ben Bova's 'Grand Tour of the Solar System' series. Set in the near future it describes a world divided into an authoritarian mix of new religious fundamentalist governments, massive multinationals and heroic scientists and pioneers picking their way through the solar system planet by planet (including the Asteroid belt, setting for the last three books). Mercury is a tale of revenge and Bova is at his best when describing the interplay of human relations and betrayals that forge his characters. Unfortunately the rest of the book is poorly realised and feels unfinished. Admittedly Mercury is perhaps the least interesting of the planets, being a big baked rock, and Bova tries to expand the story with an extended flashback describing the first space elevator and, later, one of the characters' exile to the Asteroid belt. There's nothing here that hasn't been done before and I got the feeling that Bova was retreading old ground, or plagiarising others (I won't spoil the plot but the catastrophe half-way through the book is lifted wholesale from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series). His peripheral characters are weak. The arrogant Japanese corporate boss has stepped straight from the pages of Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and trots out the old cliched mistakes about Japanese businessmen being closet samurai. Grammatical errors and poor proof-reading ('despondent' repeated twice in the same paragraph) suggests this book was trotted on out autopilot for the sake of completeness. If you're into the series it's worth reading, if not, I'd either turn to the brilliant Moon series, Jupiter or wait and hope Bova gets back on form with the next planet.
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