Bluffing Texas Style

The Arsons, Forgeries, and High Stakes Poker Capers of Rare Book Dealer Johnny Jenkins

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Michael Vinson: Bluffing Texas Style (2020, University of Oklahoma Press)

250 pages

English language

Published Feb. 18, 2020 by University of Oklahoma Press.

ISBN:
978-0-8061-6542-4
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In 1989 a woman fishing in Texas on a quiet stretch of the Colorado River snagged a body. Her “catch” was the corpse of Johnny Jenkins, shot in the head. His death was as dramatic as the rare book dealer’s life, which read, as the Austin American-Statesman declared, “like a bestseller.”

In 1975 Jenkins had staged the largest rare book coup of the twentieth century—the purchase, for more than two million dollars, of the legendary Eberstadt inventory of rare Americana, a feat noted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His undercover work for the FBI, recovering rare books stolen by mafia figures, had also earned him headlines coast to coast, as had his exploits as “Austin Squatty,” playing high stakes poker in Las Vegas. But beneath such public triumphs lay darker secrets.

At the time of his death, Jenkins was about to be indicted by the …

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