At the center of the sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein lies a single, glaring truth: Epstein could never have done the unspeakable things he did if he hadn’t existed in a world that allowed him to amass unlimited wealth.

That’s not the argument of Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper’s A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein, part of a spate of new reporting on Epstein’s life, crimes, and outlandish death. As reporters for the right-wing Washington Examiner and various conservative media before that, it’s unlikely that the authors were aiming to write a parable about the perils of concentrated wealth in the hands of amoral financiers and the need to redistribute it.

Rather, Goodman and Halper have produced a well-reported, down-the-line book on the Epstein saga, a story that, by its very nature, makes that case for them. The story of Epstein and his crimes is impossible to untangle from the matter of wealth and power: who has it, who doesn’t, what they’ll do to get it, and the terrible things they can do once they have it.