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 Paqualito, trigger men 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 and trial ultimately prevailed, and have since become a model for gang enforcement in cities around the world. In the end, the Wild Cowboys were found to be responsible for over sixty murders in three boroughs.

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.