Publisher's Synopsis
This is the story of the irrepressible Carlo Brigante, Puerto Rican hustler, drug dealer, survivor and great talker. He evokes his doomed world of New York's Spanish Harlem - a streetwise life in the fast lane, with no exit, both brutal and hilarious. At first full of confidence in his ability to ride the tiger of New York's gangland unscathed, his first serious descent in to the world of crime leads to his eventual imprisonment. The sequel After Hours, a longer and darker tale, shows Carlito, older and wiser, trying to get out of his dangerous life of crime. Needing money, he opens an after-hours nightclub while he works on a last move to fund his retirement. But the lawyer who sprang Carlito from prison, turns out to be up to his neck in it with the mafia and wants to call in a favour. And, as Carlito says, "a failure can kill faster than a bullet." This is fast moving American crime writing at its very best that lifts the Iid on Spanish Harlem as no other book does. Edwin Torres was born and raised in the district and as he says "a lot of the friends I grew up with are in jail now. I put some of them there." For Torres is now a criminal court judge in New York City.
