In the fifties and sixties a thriving genre of trashy, sensationalistic pulp novels purporting to expose the sordid twilight world of lesbians sprang up. While most these dime store novels were written by and for straight men and traded mostly in ugly stereotypes about lesbians (and their eventual defeat and/or rescue by a male hero), a rare few were actually written by lesbian authors who attempted to treat their heroines with respect-- and a healthy splash of camp and sensationalism, too.