For a short time, Víctor holds in his hands “the future of the Society of the Free”, a metallic cube where the only copy of the network containing the data of Neurón, a parallel society that tries to escape the oppressive power of the state, is kept. But Nivia has betrayed him. His partner is actually an agent and has set him up. In Bed 32 (“Cama 32”) Víctor is pursued, captured, tortured. But he no longer carries the cube in his hand, for now Víctor has become Neurón. Within his consciousness, irreversibly attached to his thoughts and even his most intimate memories, Neurón is hidden. And from his damaged body the information that keeps the Neurón network and the Society of the Free alive is transmitted. For the resistance, Víctor becomes a saviour figure. Mila, whom he once loved but from whom he had to distance himself for security reasons, does everything she can to save him. Will Neurón perish or can the network survive, and with it hope?
In his fiercely written novel, Quercia depicts a dystopian world from the point of view of the characters who live in it. He is primarily interested in their behaviour under what they perceive as a normal state of surveillance. In a world that has features of our present, but also harks back to the military dictatorships of the last century.

In The Dreams That Are Left (“Electrocante”), Natalio, a Class 5, the City’s most despised cops, responsible for quietly eliminating dissidents, needs to get a new ‘electrocant’, a human-looking robot that serves as his assistant. Short of money, he makes do with an old, low-quality model that quickly distinguishes itself by the disturbing strangeness of its expressions and reactions. But Natalio has no time to ponder these anomalies: he has a new case to solve. He has been contacted by Special Dreams, the huge virtual reality company in which millions of the City’s inhabitants take refuge from their miserable lives, encapsulated in impossible dreams. An imposter is selling spaces using stolen identities. While some fiercely oppose this disturbing business venture, others would give anything to gain access. The investigation turns dangerous and reveals a conspiracy beyond its possibilities, in which the robot is a key component.

Santiago Quiñones is at his wit‘s end. His fiancée Marina does not love him anymore. Is it because he had too many other women, even without ever having loved anyone other than Marina? His police colleagues despise him. Is it because he had an affair with his boss’s wife, and this boss is now after him? And he‘s gnawed by guilt ever since he helped his seriously ill stepfather to die. Is it because he grew up without a father? One night, Santiago falls on a small-time drug dealer and makes a silly mistake. This misstep will not be long in catching up with him… In The Blood Is Not Water (“La sangre no es agua”, French title: “The Legend of Santiago”), Boris Quercia shows us his villainous policeman Santiago Quiñones in a new adventure, endowed with a sense of honour as twisted as it is solid.

Dead Dog (“Perro muerto”) is Santiago Quiñones’s second case. He has experience in the detective trade: he has faced several shootings and avid delinquents. However, when he believed he had seen everything, in a bloody battle, Jiménez, his companion, is fatally wounded. Worse still, the deceased seems to have been mixed up with some murky stories, and had internal affairs on his back. Out of curiosity as much as idleness, Santiago begins to investigate, and he finds a young woman he knows well. Yesenia lives only to avenge herself for having been kidnapped and raped by her father-in-law. In the name of their past friendship she asks Santiago to kill this man. He is plunged into a crisis: he wants a normal life, he wants to spend some days off at the seaside with his girlfriend Marina, with whom things have been difficult recently – but even if he tries, he cannot get away from his problems. It is in this oppressive atmosphere that a clue leads Santiago to the true reasons for the death of his friend, and triggers a delirious adventure in the toughest districts of Santiago. Once again, it’s the tone of the novel and the complex character of the main figure – who loves his girlfriend but wants to try other women as well, who is not always politically correct but is a moral person who in the end is going to do the right thing – that inevitably draws the reader into its spell.

In Santiago Quiñones, Cop (“Santiago Quiñones, tira”) it’s cold, it’s six in the morning and Santiago does not want to kill anyone. The problem is that he’s a cop. A cop in Santiago de Chile. And he is about to arrest a band of dangerous but inexperienced and unpredictable delinquents… After killing a fifteen-year-old young man during a difficult arrest, Santiago wanders through the streets of his city, filled with disgust. This is how his path crosses with that of beautiful Ema Marín, a woman so seductive that she will entangle him in a dark scam. Ema is an insurance broker who seems to know a lot about the cop’s past, and the reader learns that he doesn’t have an altogether clean slate… The police story goes deeper and deeper into the city’s underworld, where the force of events is incontestable and any possible dream is dashed. The attraction to women and sex at the heart of the story will lead the reader on unsuspected and strangely tragicomic paths, creating a highly original atmosphere and tone.

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.