Late one night, Michael--an addicted gambler who has lost everything, including himself--spots a woman in a white Rolls-Royce throwing something into the river. Convinced that the woman is a perfect blackmail target, he attempts to recruit a band of homeless outcasts to search for her. But news that a building is slated for demolition turns this halfhearted effort into a serious mission to find the ultimate problem-solver: money, and with it a new home for a precious collection of hardboiled paperbacks.
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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 schizophrenic’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 individual’s demons into one shared goal: save Brewster's library, at all costs.
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