Filthy Rich

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.

The Word

The Word by Hubert Crouch             391 pages

The Word is a second novel in the Jace Forman series. I haven’t read the first one; I didn’t find it necessary to have read it to enjoy this book.

The story opens with Ezekiel Shaw and his band of followers from the Brimstone Bible Church (BBC) are picketing the funeral of Second Lieutenant Lauren Hanson, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. The BBC believes in literal interpretation of God’s word. They can be compared to the Westboro Baptist Church. Other than the need to tighten the sentences (too many prepositional phrases), the scenes are vivid and distributing. It’s not surprising that her parents, after hiring Forman’s firm, to sue the BBC, reacted the way they did.

In a secondary plot, cub reporter Leah Rosen is doing her best to dig up the dirty truth about Cal Connors, one of Texas’ most prominent men. It has the same problem the major plot line does. However, Crouch intersperses the chapters well enough so that the high tension of the major plot  allows the readers to take a breath.

There is also a third plot line that pits Connors, his daughter, and his most reliable pharmaceutical witness against the system. Again, the same sentence structure problems. This part was rather buried and did little to enhance the major and secondary plot lines…and it’s the one that’s not resolved, which irritated me somewhat.

It was difficult to keep all the characters straight in the beginning once I was passed reading about the BBC and Jace.

Not surprisingly, as Crouch is an attorney, the courtroom drama is excellent. I even learned something about juries for federal cases: they don’t have to have twelve jurors, only eight.

All-in-all, The Word is a great read; I had trouble putting it down. 

I give The Word four out of five stars.