Gunmetal Black
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Overview
As a child, Eddie Santiago grows up on the mean streets of his Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago, where he witnesses his father's murder. Now in his thirties, after serving ten years in a state penitentiary, Eddie is coming home. With prison behind him, Eddie plans to seek refuge in Miami Beach. But new trouble begins when Eddie and his old friend/gangster Little Tony are pulled over by two cops, who rob Eddie of his money belt, which contains his life savings. Convinced it was a set-up, Eddie is determined to recover what is rightfully his, all the while trying to reform his childhood friend.Along the way, Eddie falls for a Mexican beauty with a past she is trying to escape. But his romance is almost cut short when he is dragged into a drug war, becomes a murder suspect, and is forced to participate in an ill-conceived casino heist.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Serrano's vivid debut urban noir followsEddie Santiago, a Puerto Rican gangbanger just off a 10-year bit in Joliet for murder. Now in his 30s, Eddie hooks up with friend Tony Pacheco, who has returned to peddling dope and collecting protection money on Chicago's mean streets and who lobbies Eddie to help the old gang heist a casino riverboat flush with cash. Eddie, carrying 40G in a money belt, has a different plan: to go to Miami to join Chiva, his old cellmate from Joliet, and open a salsa recording label. But two bent Chicago narcs, Coltrane and Johnson, strong-arm Eddie and confiscate his cash. Broke and stuck in Chicago, Eddie decides to recover his money even while he tries to go straight. Whether he has enough decency and perseverance to do all of that while hanging with the crazy, bloody-minded Tony is just one of the questions Serrano expertly sets up. A dose of unsentimental romance helps Eddie along and puts Serrano in the same class as young noir-meisters Charlie Huston and Jason Starr. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Rollie Welch
Here's proof that street lit is not limited to African American characters or readers. Debut novelist Serrano adds a Latino flavor to the genre with this intricate, Spanish-slang-laced story about a Puerto Rican parolee's journey from jail cell to Chicago's rough streets as he encounters betrayal, police corruption, casual sex, and stunning violence. The tense plot will grip readers, who will clamor for Serrano's next work. For street lit collections and collections serving Hispanic populations.— LibraryJournal.com