Portland Confidential: The Rise and Fall of Big Jim Elkins
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Big Jim Elkins was a con man who turned up in Portland in 1937 and, over the years that followed, built a sprawling operation out of the city's vices. Bootlegging, gambling, the sex trade and narcotics all passed through his hands, and his reach extended into the public offices meant to stop him.
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This account traces his rise from a small-time hustler to a figure with real power over the city's underworld, and it follows the institutions that bent to him. It is a portrait of one ambitious man and the city that let him flourish, told with the attention to detail that local history demands.
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