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Rating: 
Summary: An okay read. . .
Review: "Gangbusters" is an okay, but not a great book about criminals. You want a killer read about crime? Try "Black Mass: The Irish Mob, The FBI and A Devil's Deal" by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill. Now that's a wild book. And all true too.
Rating:
Summary: An okay read. . .
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not "Wow", But "So What?"
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good Story but with Loose Ends
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Story But Confusing at Times
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: good book, very true to life in NY
Review: 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."
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good Story but with Loose Ends
Review: When we read about drugs, gangs and violence we wonder why the police aren't doing anything. Why are they allowing people, often innocent victims, to be gunned down in the streets. Further we wonder why the courts aren't doing more to put these malevolent violators of decency away. Gangbusters answers many of the questions citing politics and bureauracy as reasons why the police can't get the job done as well as they'd like to. Gangbusters takes the reader through a difficult attempt to rid a section of New York of a drug gang called the Cowboys who terrorized their portion of the city for years, often enlisting the paid help of children of tender years who would do anything for $30. A sepcial unit of prosecutors along with selected detectives dedicated years to bringing the Cowboys down and the good news is that they did, but it is how and what it took that comprises the story. Their frustration becomes the reader's frustration as time after time politics intrudes itself into a worthy effort that should have been helped along at every turn. An interesting slice of the tale is the involvement of newsman Dan Rather's son, Daniel Rather, a prosecutor, who for whatever reasons, causes problems with an already overburdened unit. This book is for everyone who wants to know more about how the greater world operates and the tragedies that lie outside our comfortable lives. Further, it is an eloquent statement about how the system fails to reward those who truly make a difference.
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