Pioneers, Passionate Ladies, and Private Eyes illuminates the significance of dime novels, series books, and paperbacks by exploring their historical backgrounds and analyzing their texts. Popular heroes and mysterious heroines abound as they are subjected to the scholar's eye and explored as literary artifact, symbol, and myth. Readers will be enthralled as relationships are delineated among the three genres, between culture and popular fiction, and between history and fact. The result is a one-of-a-kind study of the evolutionary development and importance of these three forms of popular culture.