Synopses & Reviews
In the bestselling tradition of Nicholas Pileggi, Joseph Wambaugh, and Robert Daley's Prince of the City, a thoroughly enthralling story of how the seasoned veterans of New York's elite Homicide Investigation Unit took down the city's most dangerous drug gang, and in the process rewrote the book on tackling gang crime.
Gangbusters is a riveting narrative about the secretive, elite Homicide Investigation Unit and its successful investigation and prosecution of the notorious upper Manhattan Wild Cowboys, one of the bloodiest and most violent drug gangs in New York's long history. For two years, veteran reporter Michael Stone was granted exclusive access to the inner workings of HIU, its brilliant and iconoclastic chief, Walter Arsenault, and the seasoned, street-smart detectives and prosecutors who helped to put the Wild Cowboys behind bars.
The book opens with the shocking and senseless execution of a Tarrytown college boy on the West Side Highway. Over time, the case leads detectives
to the Wild Cowboys, a drug gang whose size and penchant for violence and intimidation have terrorized the South Bronx and upper Manhattan for years. HIU's attempts to bring down the Wild Cowboys' ruthless leader, Lenny, and feared enforcers, Platano and Pasqualito, triggermen for scores of the gang's murders, posed challenges that would test the unit's very survival. But HIU's dedicated collaboration of prosecutors and detectives and the strategies
Arsenault employed in the unit's investigation have since become a model for gang enforcement in cities around the world. In the end, the Wild Cowboys and their allies were responsible for more than sixty murders. A rich roller-coaster ride of a narrative with a colorful and, at times, heroic cast of characters, Gangbusters is true crime at its page-turning best.
Synopsis
A top homicide investigation unit takes on one of the most savage and destructive gangs in NewYork City history in this gritty true-crime narrative.
The investigation into the late-night murder of a college student on the West Side Highway leads to the Wild Cowboys, a group of young men who for years terrorized Upper Manhattan and the Bronx while running a $30,000-a-day drug business. What follows is a tale of dogged pursuit that offers a fascinating inside look at the workings of a complex police investigation, and a satisfying account of how a city took back its streets.
About the Author
MICHAEL STONE is a veteran journalist who covered the New York scene for New York magazine for over a decade. He has over a dozen cover stories to his credit, including newsbreaking features on John Gotti, Robert Chambers, and the Central Park Jogger. This is his first book. He lives in New York City.