Some Clouds

In a spare narrative voice that packs a wallop, Taibo ( The Shadow of the Shadow ) describes a Mexico City teeming with corruption, passion and hazards for his one-eyed, half-Irish, half-Basque, Coca-Cola-swilling PI, Hector Belascoaran Shayne. Taibo's detective owes a great deal to the Dashiell Hammett prototype: while he turns a jaded eye on the affairs of men (and women), he also demonstrates loyalty and courage beyond the call of duty in his work and personal relationships. Here he rescues his sister's childhood amiga Anita after she is brutally attacked and raped upon inheriting blood money from her murdered husband. Sound complicated? The threads of corruption in this novel are tied in double and triple knots, but clean prose carries the reader through a neat process of untying them, even if credibility is strained by Anita's readiness to become sexually involved with the hero before she has so much as removed the bandages from her injuries. In an interesting twist, characteristic of his playful literary sensibility, Taibo portrays Shayne's encounter with a writer of dubious success who bears the author's own given names, Paco Ignacio. Taibo takes the gumshoe into new regions of the map and of the imagination. (July)