The Sexual Criminal

the long version

Originally published fifty years ago as a criminology/sexology textbook for law enforcement personnel, The Sexual Criminal is a fascinating glimpse at the seedy L.A. Confidential underbelly of a dark and fetid Los Angeles, a city littered with innumerable true-life noir characters: a hophead butcher who eviscerates his dance-hall girlfriend; an electrician who makes love to his pet collie; an Italian immigrant who engages in clandestine necrophilia; an inebriated hustler who strangles his homosexual meal ticket; an adulterous housewife who puts rat poison in her husband's coffee. Written in a terse, Dragnet-like style by the controversial autocratic director of the Los Angeles Police Department's Sex Offense Bureau, and graphically illustrated with mugshots and harshly-lit photographs of violently torn bodies, The Sexual Criminal is both an amazing sociological time capsule of a not-so-distant era in the history of Los Angeles and a voyeuristic, prurient examination of the explosive sex lives of its inhabitants. from Goodreads