The Shamshine Blind

Pardo debuts with a clever if formulaic detective story involving an alternate history of the 1980s. In Pardo’s account, NATO enters the Falklands War with Argentina. It’s a disastrous move, as the “Gauchos” overwhelm the continental U.S. with a series of “psychopigment” blasts involving paintballs that afflict people with debilitating emotions. Pardo describes the strategy as a “logical outcome of the Argentine temperament—the navel-gazing melancholy of tango combined with the adolescent arrogance of a nation inventing itself.” At the center is Kay Curtida, a federal agent at Pigment Enforcement in San Francisco who discovers a right-wing plot involving a new pigment that will subdue the population by inducing blind faith. The depressive Kay is continually getting in over her head, bursting onto crime scenes and getting hit with slugs of Slate Gray Ennui and Cloud Gray Listlessness. So jumbled is her mental state, as a result, that she doesn’t realize she’s in love with Doug Nambi, an old friend who works in the agency’s Boise lab. When Doug descends on Kay’s turf, Kay’s emotional confusion and the danger she’s in both surge. There’s charm in the inventive details and in-depth character work, but Paz drops one too many easy clues, cleans up too many messes, and ties up too many loose ends in service to the plot. It’s fun, but a bit exhausting in the end. (Feb.)