Brighton Rock
|
|
Brighton Rock is a novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1938, that was adapted into a film in 1947 starring Richard Attenborough.
It is a thriller set in 1930s Brighton. The antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teenage sociopath and up-and-coming gangster who murders a member of his gang at the beginning of the book. His attempts to cover his tracks lead to a chain of fresh crimes and to an ill-fated marriage to Rose, a waitress. Another central character is Ida Arnold, a kind-hearted and decent woman who is drawn into the action by a chance occurrence but who then proceeds to place herself at the centre of events in part to protect Rose from the remorseless, deeply disturbed boy she has married.
Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also a powerful exploration of the nature of sin. This theme was related to Greene's own Roman Catholicism, which he explored further in other aspects of his work.