Crime Family : A Novel

Spanning Hollywood, high fashion, and hidden offshore empires, Crime Family traces an heir adopted through the infamous Louise Wise agency as he confronts the crimes, lies, and generational trauma money was meant to bury.

Spanning Hollywood, high fashion, and hidden offshore empires, Crime Family traces an heir adopted through the infamous Louise Wise agency as he confronts the crimes, lies, and generational trauma money was meant to bury. “A haunting meditation on what we inherit, what we become, and what it costs to break the pattern.” —Bret Easton Ellis Chase grew up knowing two truths: that he didn’t quite belong, and that the family who raised him lived by rules the rest of the world could never quite understand. Adopted into a dynasty with roots in organized crime, Chase spends his adult life in Hollywood, trying to build an identity outside the shadow of blood and betrayal trailing behind him. But when federal prosecutors come knocking, Chase is dragged back into the empire he has spent decades evading. The investigation unravels not just the financial crimes that bound the family together, but a deeper inheritance as well—the secrets passed down like currency, the silence demanded in exchange for protection, and the lies that distort what it means to belong. Globe-spanning in scope yet intimate at its core, Crime Family blends the immediacy of true crime with the psychological depth of literary fiction. It is a novel about money and memory, loyalty and loss, and the impossible reality of needing to escape the family you never chose.