Publisher's Synopsis
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE 'AMERICAN DREAM' WE WERE ALL PROMISED?
"The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn't technology or globalization. It's the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market."
-Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor and author of The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
LAS VEGAS, NOVEMBER 1970-In a darkened suite on the top floor of the Desert Inn, ailing billionaire Howard Hughes, the richest man in the world at the time, hands his final testament to twenty-year-old Chase Wheeler. Just over a week later, Hughes's minders abruptly move him out of Las Vegas in the middle of the night, and Wheeler vanishes without a trace.
PRESENT DAY-Demolition expert Randy Miller discovers forty eight pages of Hughes's rough notes just hours before the Desert Inn is imploded. In dire financial straits, Randy and his wife Jeanine decide to put a few of the pages on eBay. Days later, the Miller family is attacked by a gunman determined to have those pages plus all the others. The Millers flee with their children into hiding and contact the only person they feel they can trust-Jason Hammond. Jason has become an international celebrity through his gift for solving the greatest mysteries of the modern age, including the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Jason reads through the cryptic notes and realizes they are the key to tracking down Hughes's now-legendary lost will. If discovered, it would endow certain people with great fortune while stripping it from others-more than adequate motivation for someone to bring a professional killer into the equation. But the situation is far from that simple, and Jason's investigation soon leads him to the chilling truth behind the economic decline of America's working class through the steady application of income inequality-and the terrifying realization that those responsible aren't done yet....
