Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice

Part true crime, part cultural history, Indecent Advances shows how a diverse cast of figures - from J.Edgar Hoover to Jack Kerouac, Patricia Highsmith, James Baldwin and Gore Vidal - navigated a world where queer victims of violent crime were repainted in newspapers as criminals, and how these stories kept a rigid hold on ideas of what was normal.

Polchin explores how this discrimination was transformed by gay rights activists before Stonewall, and how the crime pages were vital to the emerging gay rights movement.