Filthy Rich by James Patterson and John Connolly with Tim Malloy, 287 pages
In June of 2008, Jeffrey Epstein plead guilty to a single charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution, and was sentenced to spend 18 months in jail, of which he served 13. It is doubtful whether such a minor case would have garnered any attention beyond an article in the local newspaper, except that Jeffrey Epstein was a billionaire who counted among his friends both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. And Epstein had not been accused of having sex with a single teenage prostitute, but paying dozens of underage girls hundreds of dollars each for "massages" and similar sums for recruiting new girls into the network. The generous plea deal, negotiated by a legal team that included Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, is a stark reminder of the extent to which great wealth and political connections can shield an individual from the full legal consequences of even the most appalling crimes.
Overall, Filthy Rich is about what you'd expect from the Patterson firm. There is no real insight into Epstein - the authors all but admit that he remains a cipher to them. Nor can the book get too close to his victims, who are, after all, minor victims of sex crimes. Despite a considerable amount of innuendo, there are no grand revelations about sex parties in which underage girls mingled with American politicians and British royals. The story of the actual investigation which resulted in Epstein's exposure, however, is somewhat compelling, and the narrative never drags or becomes dull.
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