Brighton Rock

Graham Greene's Brighton Rock is the classic murder tale set in 1930s Brighton and which was made into a successful feature film in 1948. A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller, exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things'. Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also an exploration of the nature of sin and the basis of morality; Pinkie and Rose are Roman Catholics, as was Greene, and their beliefs are contrasted with Ida's strong but non-religious moral sensibility.