In 2008, prolific novelist Andrew Vachss (it rhymes with "tax") brought down the curtain on his series of 18 novels featuring the protagonist Burke, "an ex-con turned avenging angel for hire." Vachss' newest work, "Haiku," lacks the urban mercenary's charismatic presence, but it does return to familiar settings in subterranean New York, where we are introduced to a small band of street people who eke out a precarious existence.

The motley crew includes Lamont — who appears to have been modeled after Morgan Freeman — a sharp ex-gangbanger who upon release from prison published a book of poetry that briefly made him the darling of the literati; Ranger, a PTSD-plagued veteran who is still fighting the Vietnam war; Michael, a former stockbroker and gambling addict; Brewster, an obsessive-compulsive schizophrenic; and Target, an idiot-savant whose speech is limited to four-word outbursts composed in rhyme.

The first-person narrative voice belongs to an elderly Japanese who the others have nicknamed "Ho," owing to a superficial resemblance to the Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. Under Ho's reluctant leadership, the band pools its members' survival skills to provide sustenance and mutual support as they execute their collective mission: rescuing a huge library of paperbacks from a building that is slated for demolition.