Prologue: "a great and consuming terror" -- "This capital of half a world" -- Hunter of men -- "In mortal dread" -- The mysterious six -- A general rebellion -- Explosion -- Wave -- The General -- "The terror of hurtful people" -- "Once to be born, once to die" -- War without quarter -- The city of living death -- Backlash -- A secret service -- The gentleman -- In Sicily -- Black horses -- Goatville -- A return

Beginning in the summer of 1903 the children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators' only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The tabloid press heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Joseph Petrosino, a dogged and ingenious detective, and the all-Italian police squad he assembled, raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country's anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe