Customer Reviews

Gangbusters: How a Street Tough, Elite Homicide Unit Took Down New York's Most Dangerous Gang

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I thought this book was a "good read" but not a "great read." What keeps me from giving the five star endorsement are a number of factors:

1. no pictures -- I didn't want to see any gory crime scene photographs, just pictures of the good and bad guys. Seeing faces tends to bring things to life.

2. confusing -- There are hundreds of crimes and characters in the narrative. As a result, it got very confusing at times. I think the author should have thrown in some of the diagrams of the gangs and how they interacted with each other (like the way the prosecution explained things to the jury at the trial).

3. a bit wordy -- I think the author could have trimmed twenty pages from his narrative by weeding out overly long biographical sketches of peripheral players and by eliminating the office politics story.

4. dubious triumph -- I guess the elimination of the Wild Cowboys (aka "Red Top") is a definite triumph. A bunch of killers were locked up. Crime in the area they operated in has gone down. But I feel a little queasy over the fact that two of the gang's leaders were allowed to plead out to non-life sentences for orchestrating crimes and street terrorism that merit, in my view, the death penalty.

If you live in suburbia and want to get a good picture of life in the inner city this is the book to read. I have to admit the book was a little unnerving knowing that ive hung out on a few of the corners where some murders happened, imagine my surprise when reading this book! What would have made it better is if we had a more round about picture on the victims, and the perps. As many inner city kids know when your raised seeing one way of life from first sight sometimes you dont know anything else... its not an excuse but maybe we shouldn't only look at the criminal/punishment aspect but a reform aspect. Some kids grow up seeing from first sight there parents smoking crack//shooting dope, or making there family income off of a spot, they're not told go to school and do good, theyre told quit school get a job, pay half the rent, and if you want a couch buy one cause i traded ours for $30 of dope. imagine growing up with this message, which is as strong as the messages for you to suceed were when you were growing up. how hard is it to do good when all you know is societies "bad" and thats normal to you. its probabally just as hard as a "normal" person being bad instead of "good."

I'm in the process of reading this book. While I agree with most of the sentiments of the reviewers that gave it unstintingly glowing reviews, I'm finding it a little bit difficult to keep track of the dozens of players (cops, crooks, DAs etc). The author helpfully provides a list of characters at the beginning, but I think that he should throw into the paperback edition a diagram of the Wild Cowboys organization (with the names, aliases, and "jobs" written in) as well as a chronology of events. It's hard to keep things straight without them, and I'm almost tempted to start reading it again and take notes so I completely understand what is happening.

Michael Stone has written a book that takes us beyond the fictions of "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue"--to describe how a homicide unit, initially established to combat New York's soaring homicide rate, actually brought down the drug-driven gangs that dominated Manhattan's upper West Side, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. He writes with energy and enthusiasm about the individuals involved in this unit, the bureaucratic struggles, the courts and jails, and you are left with a vivid sense of the work and difficulties faced by these investigators, prosecutors, and judges.

He also has an excellent lead-in chapter about New York's economic decline and the changes of the 1960s and 1970s that coincided with the infestation of drugs; and the various political forces that impinged on the police force, including the anti-corruption efforts of reformers.

This was a great read on a weekend day. I hope you enjoy it, also.

As much as I enjoy books of this genre, Gangbusters read like too much of a report. The book was dry, and the overwhelming number of players in the book had me flipping to earlier chapters to see exactly who I was reading about.

this book could have been better but he author didnt employ someone to proofread this before going to the publisher. there are so many syntactical errors in the book that it look amateurish. Also--with the ease of access to photographs--mugshots and survalliance photos--there should have been photos included in this book of the criminal gangs. i cant recommend this book.

I once live on Beekman but moved before all the Redtop Yellow top saga really got moving, reading this book let me see what my brother and his kids lived through, Mr. Stone really captured the gang and there doings well

For Gangbusters, Michael Stone claims to have had full access to the elite gang unit of the Manhattan DA's office, perhaps the premier prosecutor's office in the country. Unfortunately for readers, Stone completely squanders this golden opportunity. Dispite its interesting subject, this book is so poorly written, and ultimately so small-minded and tedious, it is virtually unreadable. By narrating the Manhattan DA's destruction of New York's infamous Wild Cowboys gang, Stone might well have presented an engaging and perhaps even important story. Instead, Stone self-indulgently chromicals the petty and irrelevant, as if proof of his own inside access is what matters to readers. Throughout the book, with no more than tabloid-level attention to the actual story, Stone delves into trivia of no significance or impact, leaving readers to wonder "So what?" Worse, the author strains to concoct unfalttering personal portraits of major players, while heaping praise upon marginal characters and functionaries. Stone serves up mere character assassination for District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and lead prosecutor Dan Rather Jr., while inexplicably gushing over others irrelevant to the success of the case. Stone wastes page after page in an unpersuasive attempt to make a hero of an administrator named Walter Arsenault who, as it turns out, himself neither investigated nor took the Wild Cowboys gang to trial. All this makes for unrewarding reading, and suggests that Gangbusters is the work of a hack writer bent on rewarding the vanity of his sources rather than the honest effort of a real journalist. Ultimately, even with full access to the elite of the Manhattan DA's office, Michael Stone either just didn't get the story, or couldn't deliver it to the reader. He would have served the story and readers far better by committing his attention to the real bad guys and the true heroes, such as the undercover cops who infiltrated the gang, the witnesses who took the stand, and the winning combination of lawyers and investigators who actually put the case together and made it stick.

This book caught my eye because I remember when the Wild Cowboys weren't in books but instead running the streets of Washington Heights and they were known as the Lenny Boys. Being a native New Yorker from Washington Heights, i only saw the good side of the Lenny boys lifestyle...the money, cars, weed, and women. Oh yes, they were making money illegally but from seeing these guys in the streets no one would ever imagine that they were responsible for so many murders in NYC.

The book did a decent job in informing the reader of the investigation which lead to the downfall these drug-slingin' bandits but left out much of what was needed to understand Lenny and his compadres day to day lifestyles.

I wish there were pictures in the book to bring to life these people who did things which are hard to believe actually happened, even for someone like me who was born and raised in the same streets these guys come from.

This is a true story, without a doubt, but i feel maybe some parts were omitted and or exagerated to make the book much more dramatic. Also, the writer could have left out more of the political game that is played down in the DA's office and elaborated more on the events that earned the Lenny boys the title, Wild Cowboys.

I would suggest this book to anyone who wants to get a taste of what it is like living in a neighborhood where crack dealers are as visible as the police themselves and wield just as much firepower as they do. But remember, it's only a taste!!!

A wonderfully told story about crime and the crimefighters in NYC. Stone's book provides an insightful and often frightening look at gangs. The members and their actions are so vividly described one feels as if they are right there on the streets with the brave investigators. This is a chilling, moving, heroic story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Not to be missed!!