The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo

Published by Atria Books on February 14, 2023

In this alternate history, Argentina won a war with the US by weaponizing pigments.  Major cities were lost in the psychopigment blitzkrieg. Veterans are still depressed after being exposed to Deepest Blue. San Francisco suffers from the residue of a Magenta Obsession bomb (warning signs caution visitors that “your emotions might not be your own”). Cities like Boise and Iowa City are the new centers of urban importance in what is left of the United States.

Pigments can be inhaled, swallowed in gel caps, or absorbed through the skin. Some pigments have become popular recreational substances. Each pigment produces a different mental state: Cerulean Guilt, Apricot Awe, Scarlet Passion. Slate Gray produces ennui. Sunshine Yellow is prescribed as an antidepressant.

A clumsy attempt to explain psychopigments depends on psychobabble — an “invisible fog of feelings that humans emit with every sentiment” is distilled and synthesized before being unleashed in “an overwhelming concentration of that same miasma” that becomes “contagious, pushing the feelings of one village member into another, gaining strength from every carrier.” Okay, but what?

Within that postapocalyptic setting, The Shamshine Blind attempts to develop a police detective thriller. It is essentially an “exotic drug dealer” novel, the kind where cops work to stop new designer drugs before they create havoc, except that drugs have been rebranded as pigments. The concept has imaginative appeal but it doesn’t quite work.

Kay Curtida works for Pigment Enforcement, a law enforcement agency that tries to keep new pigments off the market while assuring that known pigments are not abused. Paz Pardo is so busy building her world of psychopigments that it takes some time before she gives Curtida anything to do. Curtida is supposedly working on a counterfeit Sunshine pigment that her agency calls Shamshine, but other detectives have that investigation under control. While Curtida waits to take on the challenge of a new pigment, she entertains herself with relationship drama, fretting about her mother (who wants her to get married) and the return of Doug Nambi to her life, with whom she had a thing when they were both cadets.

Curtida takes an interest in Winfred Pimsley, who is “a crook but my kind of crook.” When the plot eventually gets rolling, Curtida discovers what seems to be a new pigment in the pigment collection that Pimsley keeps in his antique store. Perhaps it was synthesized by Priscilla Kim, a notorious pigment bootlegger, but what might it be? Ananda Ashaji, leader of a cult called the Pinkos, has been ranting about Hope Depletion Events. Could the new pigment give people hope? Doesn’t sound like such a bad thing in a world where hope is a vanishing commodity. Perhaps it is something more nefarious than hope, a pigment that emulates the opiate of the masses.

A mundane plot is overshadowed by the underdeveloped background of Argentine rule (complete with hyper-inflation) over the US. The story imagines a faith-based paramilitary terrorist organization called Knights of Liberty that may be competing or cooperating with the Pinkos. I’m not sure whether other readers would be as confused by the story as I was. Perhaps I lost interest too early to make a serious effort to arrange the plot elements in my memory.

An unreasonable amount of relationship drama does nothing to make the story more interesting. Did Curtida want to forget that she had sex with Plato because he was a high school lothario who had sex with all the girls? Why is Curtida worried about what her mother will think about her fake marriage to Meekins? My answer to questions surrounding the novel’s relationship drama questions was: Who cares?

To her credit, Pardo works diligently to avoid making an inherently messy plot entirely incomprehensible. I’m sure a reader with a notepad and more focused attention might make sense of it. I didn’t find a reason to bother. While the story shows imagination and promise, neither the regrettably noirish plot nor the excessively fretful characters spoke to me.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS