'I Fingered the Vice Lord...'

One shudders to think what other sexual depravities those teen age call girls were forced to perform - fingering their vice Lord was probably amongst the least of them  While language changes over time, with popular usage redefining the meaning of certain words, one can't help but suspect that 'fingering' had a double meaning back in 1959 and that cover strap line was a deliberate double-entendre.  True Police Cases, of which this is the cover of the August 1959 issue, was another variant on the men's magazine formula, part of a sub-genre focusing on supposedly ';true' crime.  Very lurid 'true' crime, with an emphasis on sex, prostitution, violence and the bloodiest murders imaginable.  It is still a viable formula - magazines like True Detective are still around, plying much the same material.  Then there are all those 'true crime' TV shows recreating infamous murders or prying into supposedly 'unsolved' mysteries, not to mention the rise of the 'True Crime' podcast in recent years.

There' no doubt that people like to consume vicariously the dubious thrills of real life crime from the safety of their own homes - only the medium by which they experience this 'revulsion' and 'shock' changes.  The pleasures some people experience from reading, watching or hearing about 'true' crime is really no different from those felt by people who enjoy so called 'video nasties' - although, interestingly, the former are generally the sort of people who condemn the latter.  This, despite the fact that the 'video nasties' never really claim to be 'real', being obvious fantasies.  Which is the paradox of the 'true crime' genre - the fact that it is supposedly 'real' gives it respectability, yet at the same time means that its consumers are, in effect, deriving entertainment from the real life terror and misery of actual victims.   Mind you, it is probably that faux respectability which has allowed the 'True Crime' genre of magazine to survive while other men's magazines have vanished - it was the one sub-genre that the middle class reader could safely be seen buying, even though, in reality, it was serving up the same combination of sex and violence that filled the pages of the general men's magazines.