A sick, bankrupt man from the south of Madrid becomes the middleman in an explosives trafficking operation between criminal gangs. To avoid prison, he plays both sides with the police until he is trapped in a spiral of suspicion where the informant always pays.
Israel Cruz, a fifty-two-year-old man, ill and suffocating under debt, struggles to keep his daughter Marina afloat, trapped in addiction. To get money, he becomes involved in a business that far exceeds him: the trafficking of homemade explosives that different gangs in the south of Madrid use to plan increasingly ambitious heists. Within days, Cruz becomes a key piece in a criminal network that threatens to blow apart the city’s southern belt.
In this territory, the perfect breeding ground for violence takes shape: neighborhood crime, low-level informants, and police officers willing to cross lines. Cruz acts as an intermediary between the explosive manufacturers and the criminal gangs. His main client is Samuel Vargas, a thug who uses the material to blow up ATMs with growing sophistication. At the same time, Cruz plays both sides: while selling explosives, he feeds information to Santos, a police officer who might help him avoid a pending sentence for an old crime.
The fragile balance collapses when Cruz sells explosives to a far-right group and decides to inform on them to gain favor with the police. The operation ends in a failed shootout in Vistalegre and unleashes an internal manhunt in the criminal underworld to uncover who the snitch is. Samuel Vargas’s circle begins to suspect everyone—especially Cruz.
As the police identify Cruz as the link in the explosives trafficking network, his personal life falls apart: Marina disappears after emptying his apartment to get money for drugs. Even so, Cruz keeps going, trapped in the double game and scrambling for cash by any means necessary, until no one trusts him anymore.
The criminal jobs keep piling up until Cruz believes he has found a way out: a fixed cockfight through which he hopes to make fast money and escape, at least for a moment, from his misery. He wins. He smiles. And on his way home, he is shot in the back of the head. A cold, inevitable, almost administrative settling of scores, in a world where the informant always pays.
Low-Bred Roosters is a story about losers who believe themselves heroes. A classic noir—dry, tense, and relentless—with a quinqui atmosphere that turns the housing blocks, bars, and streets of southern Madrid into a battlefield.
RELEVANT INFORMATION: Gloria Trinidad is a Spanish writer, poet, and playwright.
Low-Bred Roosters is her first novel: a noir with strong audiovisual potential, centered on a pure antihero and set in the neighborhoods of southern Madrid—an ecosystem that is highly visual, rich in symbolism, and functions as a character in its own right. The novel develops a powerful, raw, and realistic criminal plot.
What the press says:
“In fact, there really was a great Spanish novel in 2025: Low-Bred Roosters, by Gloria Trinidad. An example of precise, beautiful, neighborhood noir—dry and straight to the gut.” – Alberto Olmos, El Confidencial
“The debut novel by this author adheres to the parameters of classic noir, dignifies the genre from a literary standpoint, and elevates quinqui into a great story of losers.” – Jaime Cedillo, El Cultural
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Feature Film, TV Movie.
AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.
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