The Tragedy and the Triumph of Phenix City, Alabama by Margaret Anne Barnes. The definitive narrative history of the city's Sin City era and the cleanup that followed Albert Patterson's 1954 assassination. Barnes was a local newspaperwoman who knew the players and tells the story with the immediacy of someone who was there.
The Phenix City Story (screenplay/film, 1955) by Crane Wilbur and Daniel Mainwaring. The Allied Artists film noir released only fifteen months after the Patterson assassination, shot on location in Phenix City with several of the actual townspeople in supporting roles. The opening newsreel-style sequence of interviews with real residents is documentary in everything but name.
Wicked Phenix City by Faith Serafin. A breezier, episodic local history hitting the colourful figures of the gambling-and-prostitution era — the Dixie Mafia bosses, the corrupt cops, the brothel madams of the 14th Street strip — written from local archives and contemporary newspaper accounts.
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 by Taylor Branch. Not specific to Phenix City but the second volume of Branch's monumental civil-rights history covers eastern Alabama in detail and gives the regional context for understanding the racial politics that shaped the city alongside its better-known vice trade.