At the height of the Jazz Age, when Prohibition was turning ordinary citizens into criminals and ordinary criminals into celebrities, America's true crime detective magazines were born. True Detective came first, in 1924, and by 1934 the magazines were so popular that cops and robbers alike vied to see themselves on the pages; even FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover wrote regularly for what came to be called the "Dickbooks." When liquor was once more legal, however, and the Depression over, the "detectives" turned to sexy bad girls in tight sweaters, slit skirts, and stiletto heels to make sales. Packed with hundreds of lurid covers and interior images from dozens of magazine titles, this book follows the evolution and devolution of this distinctly American genre through the 1960s, chronicling not just the "detectives" but also America's attitudes towards sex, sin, crime and punishment over five decades.