A disgraced former Green Beret embarks on a lone mission to recover her stolen car in Madrid. What begins as a personal quest for revenge uncovers a criminal network tied to her dark past in Afghanistan. A fast-paced international thriller packed with action.
María Martínez, a former Green Beret in the Spanish Army, lives in Madrid with her husband, Anil Kapoor, a British professor of Indian descent, and their daughter Lucía, a gifted young pianist. Expelled from the military and still haunted by the scars of her service, María now works as an Uber driver to make ends meet. But her fragile stability collapses when her car—her only source of income—is stolen. With no help from the police, no insurance payout, and bills piling up, María decides to take matters into her own hands. If no one else will help her, she will help herself.
Meanwhile, Inspector Trujillo, intrigued by María’s intervention during a recent robbery, begins quietly following her movements. María turns to Ramón, a former Special Forces comrade from Afghanistan who now runs a scrapyard. He points her toward an illegal garage connected to the theft. From there, María is drawn into a criminal underworld where stolen cars are used to transport drugs across Europe.
The story alternates with flashbacks to a covert mission María and Ramón carried out years earlier: the assassination of Zadran Hosseini, an Afghan-Pakistani drug trafficker with ties to Islamist terrorism. The operation went disastrously wrong. María escaped alone while Ramón and the rest of the team were captured. With the help of a local tribe, she managed to rescue him, while her husband Anil, after seeing news of the kidnapping on television, mobilized former SAS soldiers from London to pressure for an international intervention. María and Ramón’s escape through hostile territory became a brutal test of survival and loyalty.
Back in the present, María identifies those responsible for the theft and discovers that the criminal organization is led by a man known as Tarik. After a series of brutal confrontations, she learns that her car is being held in a warehouse in Torrejón. Ramón promises to help her, but when she arrives at his scrapyard, she finds him murdered. Her revenge is swift: she kills those responsible for Ramón’s death before storming Tarik’s warehouse in a blazing assault. There she uncovers the truth—Tarik is actually Zadran Hosseini, the same man she faced years earlier in Afghanistan. This time, she kills him without hesitation. Inspector Trujillo, having witnessed everything, chooses to protect her by erasing the evidence and covering up what happened.
María returns home emotionally shattered. Anil, who had accepted a job in Dublin and planned to leave, instead comes back home. They embrace in silence, finding a moment of peace after a deeply personal war that María has fought alone.
RELEVANT INFORMATION: Alfredo De Braganza was born in Alicante, Spain. An award-winning screenwriter, producer, and film director, he has worked across multiple countries and built a reputation as a specialist in thrillers and action fiction.
Citizen Martínez is a gripping action thriller with a strong geopolitical backdrop. Featuring a powerful and complex female protagonist—hardened by the trauma of war and highly skilled in combat—the novel combines high-stakes urban suspense with military flashbacks set in Afghanistan, resulting in an intensely cinematic story. María’s relationships with her husband, her daughter, and Ramón, her former comrade, provide emotional depth that enriches the relentless action. The novel evokes works such as Zero Dark Thirty and Riot Police (Antidisturbios).
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Feature Film, TV Movie.
AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish, Catalan, English.
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