Dime Detective Magazine (1931-1953) is generally ranked second only to Black Mask among the great mystery pulps. Slightly less than half this handsome trade paperback originally appeared as Dime Detective Index (1986): an issue-by-issue contents listing, with small black-and-white reproductions of each cover; an author index, index to author profiles and pictures, series character to author cross-reference, appearance ranking of writers (T.T. Flynn on top with 80 is followed by Frederick C. Davis and Carroll John Daly), top ten character appearances (Frederick Nebel's Cardigan comes first with 44), and notes on continuing departments devoted to crossword puzzles and bunco protection.

Additional material includes reprinted articles (Traylor on Dwight V. Babcock and William R. Cox; Marvin Lachman on the contents of the February 15, 1935 issue), and new material (Monte Herridge on G.T. Fleming- Roberts and Davis; Will Murray on the rivalry with Black Mask). The one fictional feature is "The Tongueless Men," a roundrobin novelette from 1936 with chapters by John Lawrence, Flynn, Daly, Davis, and William E. Barrett. Irresistible to pulp aficionados, this excellent volume should captivate any fan or scholar of 20th-century American mystery fiction.