"Perversion of Justice" feels like a spiritual sequel to "Empire of Pain"; both books are big right now, and both are about powerful monsters pulling strings to remain out of the spotlight. "Perversion of Justice" is the weaker book because--as the Times has observed--Julie K. Brown doesn't really have a full story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein used wealthy contacts to get out of an appropriate punishment for his crimes; we know that one engineer of Epstein's scam, Acosta, later became labor secretary. (We know that Julie Brown's reporting then led to Acosta's resignation. "I'd like to step down because my involvement in a case many years ago is now unjustly stealing attention from President Trump's wonderful economic news.....") We don't know: what Trump did with Epstein. Or what Bill Clinton did with Epstein. Or what Alan Dershowitz did. We don't know exactly why Acosta behaved the way he behaved; we don't ...