From the author of the acclaimed Burke series comes a sharply affecting new novel about a group of outcasts who undertake a "mission" to save a schizophrenicrs"s hidden treasure. When his most beloved student dies as a result of what he believes to be his misguidance, Ho renounces his position as a revered sensei, abandons his dojo and all of his possessions, and embarks on a journey of atonement on the streets of New York City. Here a group of homeless men gather around him: Michael, a gambler who lost it all; Ranger, a psychotic Vietnam veteran; Lamont, an ex-con, poet, and alcoholic in that order; Target, a compulsive "clanger"; and Brewster, the keeper of a secret library in an abandoned inveterate building on the waterfront. When news hits that the building is slated for demolition, the group must subsume each individualrs"s demons into one shared goal: save Brewster's library, at all costs.

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in the area of sexually transmitted diseases, a social-services caseworker, a labor organizer, and the director of a maximum-security prison for aggressive-violent youth. Now a lawyer and consultant in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. A native New Yorker, Vachss divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest.


From the Hardcover edition.