Big Tim
Chicago did not make Tim Murphy respectable. It made him powerful.
Long before anyone called him "Big Tim," Timothy D. Murphy learned that power rarely belonged to the man with the best title. It belonged to the man people needed-the one who knew whom to call, which door to open, which favor was owed, and when fear could accomplish what persuasion could not.
From the gambling rooms and race-wire operations of early twentieth-century Chicago to ward politics, organized labor, and a seat in the Illinois legislature, Murphy rises by understanding people and the systems surrounding them. Workers see a man who remembers where he came from. Politicians see someone who can deliver votes. Employers see a threat. Police see a name that appears too often whenever violence follows a labor dispute.
His wife, Florence, sees all of him: the generosity and calculation, the humor and ambition, the loyalty and the dangerous conviction that every problem can be solved if Tim Murphy is allowed to take hold of it.
Then the federal government enters his world.
A spectacular registered-mail robbery at Pullman brings investigators who cannot be influenced by Chicago ward politics. The resulting prosecution sends Murphy to Leavenworth and forces a man accustomed to controlling every room into one where his name carries little weight.
Prison changes the city more than it changes Tim.
When he returns to Chicago, the old relationships remain, but the balance of power has shifted. New alliances, new rackets, and increasingly violent battles over the cleaning-and-dyeing industry pull Murphy toward one final struggle for relevance and control.
Based on the documented life of Chicago labor leader, political operator, and underworld figure Timothy D. "Big Tim" Murphy, BIG TIM is historical fiction about ambition, loyalty, organized labor, crime, and a city where the line between legitimate power and the other kind was rarely as clean as anyone pretended.
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