The Chorotega Critter Caper — A Hannah D Mystery by MA Datit

The Chorotega Critter Caper — horses standing in the surf on a rocky Costa Rican shore.

One plastic jug. Seven pieces of gold. A thousand years of secrets.

Hannah D is in Costa Rica with her dad, her best friend Sophie, and Dante — the boy she nearly died with on a cruise to Mexico. It is supposed to be a holiday: howler monkeys at breakfast, a guide who eats termites, and a resort where the crabs walk through the restaurant on their way to the sea.

Then Dante wades into the surf and comes back with a jug full of wet paper. Maps. Symbols nobody can read. And a note promising that the clues lead to the most prized possession of the Chorotega people.

A chestnut-mandibled toucan perched on a branch in the Costa Rican rainforest.
A jug full of paper.
A country full of clues.
A two-toed sloth hanging from a branch, looking down.
Everything here has an opinion.

Nothing in Costa Rica gets out of your way.

  • Howler monkeys who throw whatever they happen to be holding.
  • A cave ceiling covered in vampire bats, and a boy who wants to poke one.
  • Capuchins who steal anything that might be food — and everything that isn't.
  • Crocodiles, in the slow water, right where the river meets the sea.
  • Coatis with babies overhead and no sense of humour about it.

Some of them are on Hannah's side.

Two children riding a zip line above the rainforest at night, under a full moon.

Some of it happens in the dark.

Twelve hundred feet of cable, two hundred feet of air, one working harness between them, and men with flashlights climbing the tower behind. Hannah is afraid of heights. She goes anyway.

Safe wasn't really an option. It just felt like one.

And quite a lot of it happens at speed.

A horse that answers a question. A kite that clears a line of trees. A bicycle flown across a river. A raft in white water with someone else's raft closing in. Hannah keeps arriving somewhere she shouldn't be able to reach, one improbable machine at a time.

And somebody is always there first — which is the part she cannot explain.

A kite surfer crossing a lake at sunset with a volcano behind.
How do they keep finding us?

The gold is not the treasure.

What the Chorotega hid was never meant to be admired behind glass. It was meant to prove something — and there are men who have spent a great deal of money making sure nobody ever finds it. Hannah has until one o'clock.

Some things are worth more than gold, and harder to hold.

I want to read this book
Mystery
Travel
Wildlife
Friendship
Protecting the past

The Hannah D Mysteries