Brighton Rock

Published in 1938, this novel is set among the racecourse gangs of Brighton. Pinkie Brown, a teenage killer who has taken over a small mob after a murder on the pier, marries the plain waitress Rose to stop her from giving evidence, while the blowsy Ida Arnold, who met the victim, decides to interfere. The seaside town is all boarding houses, cheap cafes, and the Palace Pier. Pinkie's Roman Catholic sense of damnation sits beside his violence. The book is a crime story and a moral thriller: a pursuit along the front in which innocence, knowledge, and a boy's pride in being damned drive the action.

Bound in green cloth, blocked with a black and red design by Geoff Grandfield. Dark green slipcase.