The Family Hightower

In this novel of mistaken identity, two boys are born in the same year and both are named after their grandfather: Peter Henry Hightower, a wealthy Ukrainian-American criminal. One Peter grows up alienated from the family and ends up as a journalist. The other Peter, who goes by Petey, ends up a small-time criminal. When Petey disappears, the people who are after him track down the wrong cousin, and Peter the journalist finds himself on the run without any sense of why. He runs from one family member to the next, piecing together what his cousin was involved in as well as his family's long and complicated relationship with organized crime. Along the way he unearths long-held family secrets that may be the key to escaping his past.
"The Family Hightower" takes a close look at capitalism and organized crime in the late 20th century, and how, increasingly, the former is starting to look a lot like the latter. It's about the legend of the self-made man, and what money can do to people who don't know when they have enough. Slattery's fourth novel, "The Family Hightower" is a taut literary thriller about crime and family at the dawn of the new global age.