In Crimen en Calle Paraíso (“Crime on Paradise Street”), private detective Guadalupe Arriaga returns to Guatemala, her home country, with a challenging and risky assignment: to find the murderes of a veteran journalist, a task that official research groups have struggled to advance. In the pursuit of her mission, she will experience intense adventures and the discovery of a vast criminal enterprise, victimizing numerous people attempting to reach the United States in search of a better life. Her emotional life will also navigate paths of uncertainly when love comes knocking.

In his fascinating new novel La guerra prometida (“The Promised War”), Núñez Olivas tells the story of two men who have marked the fate of Central America in the mid-19th century: the charismatic president of Costa Rica, Juan Rafael Mora, and the American mercenary, William Walker. Called upon by the Nicaraguan liberal party to help in their fight against the conservatives, Walker does not hesitate. His aim is to conquer all the countries of Central America and annex them to the USA. But Walker, who prefers the passion of his voluptuous mistress to fighting, has not reckoned with the strong resistance of the Costa Rican army, commanded by the president himself. Artfully constructed, this entertaining and intelligent novel has all the ingredients of a bestseller: intriguing stories about politics, love and warfare in an important era of American history.

En clave de luna (“Cadence of the Moon”) tells of the crimes of a serial killer, who was known as el Psicópata (The Psychopath) in the 1980s, spreading fear and terror amid Costa Rican society. Scores of couples and women had to die before a firm lead could be established. It was not followed, however, for the suspect belonged to one of the most influential families of the country. Against this background of sleaze and corruption, Núñez Olivas develops his novel. The main characters are the young journalist Maricruz and the police investigator Gustavo. By her newspaper El Matutino, she is sent to him in a very short skirt to dig for information. The encounter is a disaster but despite all the fear of psychological harm and the ensuing communicational problems, the two become closer and end up as a couple.

Maricruz’s boss is less fortunate, the maturing chief editor Juan José, who falls in love with the married Lidia, of all people. While she manages to integrate her lover into every day life in a way that he neither disrupts her marriage nor her career, he suffers from the thought of her waking next to the other man every morning and the fact that she leads a life he is not even allowed to ask about. Disillusionment is what he is used to, also at work. Mr. Grey, owner of the paper, demands a sensational scoop one day, to please the public, and compliant silence the next, not to upset the advertising clients from business or the backers from politics. When Grey falls ill and Juan José is offered to stand in for him, he cannot resist the temptation: While he talks himself into believing it is for the welfare of the paper and the team, he too sinks into corruption and the belated but questionable enjoyment of a raised standard of living.

In the meantime, investigations are under way. Maricruz receives anonymous telephone calls, encounters a strange man in Panama who ascribes the murders to an extremist political grouping, and finds herself in the circle of an eerie sect who worships the moon. Indeed the murders were always committed at full moon, but Maricruz soon realises she is on the wrong track and was only exploited as a journalist to divert the public attention. Gustavo fares no better: As he moves closer to solving the case, his boss, a candidate for the next elections, impedes the progress of the investigations. Gustavo cannot but resign from office; just as Maricruz, he exercises his profession with ardour, but not unconditionally.

With a flawless concoction of seemingly grotesque exaggerations in the portrayal of situations – as the scene where the mini-skirted Maricruz sinks so unfavourably into the armchair there remains little left for Gustavo’s imagination – or characters as the choleric Grey.

Núñez still avoids letting them descend into ridiculousness. Instead, he presents them under the tension of their own exterior and interior constraints. Not explanations, but dialogues outline fields of conflict such as the entanglement of economy, politics, justice and media. And finally, the reader is easily won over by a tongue in cheek anti-machismo, gripping suspense and a liberal portion of humour.

An entertaining crime novel and a topical portrayal of Central American society.

Costa Rica. Tropical paradise and country of increasing criminality and violence. Don Chepe, a disenchanted ex-guerrilla, has left the capital for the beaches and plains of Guanacaste. His reputation as an honest man of action has turned him into an informal detective, at the service of anyone who requires his help. In need of money, Don Chepe investigates crimes in an area full of contrasts.

He is hired to search for a missing young man: Jaime Morales. Jaime and his best friend Alejandro have set up a consultancy and are carrying out environmental impact studies. An estuary and mangrove swamp has lost its connection to the sea. Without constant oxygenation from the tides, the estuary is rotting. The owner of an eco-hotel in the area hires the two friends to test the water, suspecting that an adjacent five-star project is responsible for the ecological disaster. Before he can deliver the results, Jaime disappears.

Trade Winds (“Vientos alisios”) is the third installment – independent and autonomous – featuring Don Chepe. The crime novel continues the thematic spirit of the previous two books, taking weather and nature as the background for an exploration of the main character.

Arrivals (“Arribadas”) is a work of fiction based on real people and events. It can be described as a deconstructed novel or series of vignettes influenced by memoir, auto-fiction, and historical reconstruction. At the center of the work, is the narrator: a Costa Rican author and college professor who struggles with depression and divorce on the East Coast of the United States. The book is structured around two main chronological storylines: 1) the narrator’s experiences in the East Coast, California and Costa Rica; 2) his family’s migration to and from the United States across four generations. The narrator undergoes a personal and professional journey in search of his family’s history, redemption, and rebirth. These experiences are interspersed with narrations of his great-grandfather’s, grandfather’s, and father’s immigrations during the 20th century. Arrivals deals with transnational family histories, questions of mental health, identity, and belonging.

Julio Flores returns to his native Costa Rica after ten years in Los Angeles, where he has become a successful banker. But now his sister has gone missing after a storm in Mazunte, Mexico and is presumed dead. While Julio tries to put her affairs in order and comforts his parents, he takes up the thin thread of their relationship, trying to find out why they have become so estranged and observing the changes of a San José that has become almost irrecognisable. Finding among her personal belongings from Mazunte a pack of letters addressed to him but never posted, he learns to his astonishment that Mariana has a little son no one seems to have known about. With his own life grinding to a halt after he has been sacked by his ambitious American boss, he decides to travel to the place of Mariana’s disappearance to find out what really happened. But when he gets to Mexico, a storm almost prevents him from continuing to Mazunte. As he finally reaches his destination, he discovers a strange guarded village that becomes stranger and more sinister the deeper he enters it. The people who live there keep forgetting who they are or why they came here, and the whole area seems to be in control of various armed groups.
With the help of Balam, he finally finds traces of his sister, and goes looking for her in the ominous Hotel Le Roi, a place where everyone wants to go but no one dares because intruders are relentlessly chased and murdered.

Daniel Quiros’s second crime novel Northern Rains (“Lluvia del norte”) once more addresses important and all-too-topical issues like immigration and environment protection while keeping the reader glued to the page.

It has been one of the worst winters in Guanacaste. When the body of an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua is found, everyone believes it to be a drug-related settling of scores. Only Don Chepe doesn’t think so. While the rains continue relentlessly, he discovers that his friend wasn’t as innocent after all: not only was he involved in serious money laundering, but he also seems connected to a real estate project building villas for rich American tourists – with disastrous consequences for the area. As big and small thugs alike try to put him off scent, Don Chepe is set on getting to the truth.

Like Red Summer, this novel is teeming with vivid characters, entertaining dialogue and first-hand descriptions of the real Costa Rica.

Daniel Quirós’s first crime novel Red Summer  (“Verano rojo”) is an engaging political thriller with real-life protagonists based on true facts.

Don Chepe is a congenial ex-guerrilla fighter who has made a tranquil life for himself in a fishing village in the incredibly hot region of Guanacaste. When a friend of his is found murdered, execution-style, on a beach, he vows to find her killer. No one knows much about la Argentina but Don Chepe believes the motive for her death lies in her illusive past. As he follows the clues she left for him, he finds an article about the unsolved political assassination of the former Nicaraguan guerrilla fighter and Sandinista leader, Edén Pastora, twenty five years ago. But how was la Argentina involved? As the heat of summer abates and the dust settles, Don Chepe finally sees clearly.

Without drifting into the usual stereotypes, Daniel Quirós presents us with an entertaining read. Written in sober language, with easy-going humour and a protagonist you’ll love, Red Summer gives us a fascinating insight into Costa Rican life off the beaten track of pura vida.

Without sentimentality Limón Reggae draws up a kaleidoscopic portrait of an unusual young woman and a family torn by affairs and racism in Central America. Time leaps and flashbacks allow an unexpected view behind the scenes of the historical process of radical change on the subcontinent. From the fragmented movement of the black people and the fight of the cocoa planters for their land it leads right up to the peace talks of the 90s with the known outcome of immense social gaps, poverty and crime.

When young Aisha retrieves her black friend Ahmed after three years – formerly Parcival, he had gone underground – she becomes infected by his political ideas, though she is highly disappointed that he now has a girlfriend. As a witness to various scenes in which she comes across children of seemingly baseless aggression, she wishes to understand the cause for such extortionate hatred. After discovering how the big landowners of Costa Rica shatter all political intentions and prevent a land reform she initially withdraws from the resistance. Aisha finds romantic love through the bourgeois Luis and experiences her own version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, though he will not introduce her to his parents for her darker skin. When she joins a guerrilla group, she suffers hunger and persecution, but simultaneously feels part of a group with the utopia of a better society. Furthermore, Aisha is entrusted with little Toñito and loves him as if he were her own. When he goes missing after a courier operation, she almost turns insane with pain. Her wounds are only slowly healed by the discovery of Reggae and the love of Raymond, although she is once again rejected by the family of her lover. The relatives of Ahmed’s brother dismiss her for being light-skinned and they break up.

Years later, the peace plan has long come into force, Aisha is travelling as an interpreter, when children – members of the violent maras – seize a moment of negligence and kidnap her. Once again Aisha looks into eyes full of hatred, when a second later she recognises Toñito …