S-F author Gregory Benford's novel The Martian Race came out in paperback in 2001. It's set in the near future when a group of nations led by the U.S. have put up a $30 billion dollar prize to the first team to do significant human exploration of a site on Mars and return. That premise, to me at least, seems the least plausible part of the story. But beyond that, it's a gripping story of this competition as told from the perspective of one member of the U.S. team. (They compete against a joint European-Chinese team). The real focus of the story is the discovery of life on Mars, and I won't be giving too much away by leaving it at that.
The back story is: NASA was the leading candidate to win the prize, using the Mars Direct concept. The United States' new large booster (the "Magnum"—does anyone think the government would give a rocket such a pornographic name?) explodes during its first trial launch, killing the crew. This essentially shuts down our human space program. But then an ambitious billionaire entrepeneur ( modeled after Ted Turner it seems) steps in, buying a lot of the hardware and hiring the reserve crew to complete the Mars mission.
As the novel starts out, it seems more like just a tribute to the Mars Society, even including Robert Zubrin and a few others in the story. But the story the discovery of Martian life takes hold, and it's really well imagined and told. Benford is a master and letting a story unfold naturally, like a mystery novel, as his scientist-heroes parse through evidence and theory (always against opposition that doesn't quite "get it").
The story advances timewise in 2015 and 2018 in alternating chapters, a technique that works really well to build the drama and fill in the story at the same time.
It's really quite a conventional story by s-f standards, the technical details of which would be familiar to anyone who's read The Case For Mars. But his concept of Martian life is really intruiging, even believable, and makes the book worth reading.
Recommended for anyone who is interested in what Mars exploration might be like.