Sprung from prison after murdering the junkie who killed his family, Sam returns in CAME UP HARD to a barely recognizable Lower Manhattan-punk rock clubs are now designer clothing stores and corner bodegas have been transformed into glass and chrome bank chains. The squatters and street punks he once ran with have been displaced by oblivious, apple-cheeked tourists. Nevertheless, as an unemployable ex-con, it doesn't take long for this hardened and conflicted thirty-eight-year-old New Yorker to fall in with a dangerous, if eccentric fraternity of con men. Complicit in a series of street hustles and vicious robberies gone wrong in this sequel to ECHOES OF A KILLING, Sam soon finds himself cornered and capable of more violence to stay alive and out of prison.