Brighton Rock

Book cover of Brighton Rock

Book description

Pinkie Brown, a neurotic teenage gangster wielding a razor blade and a bottle of sulfuric acid, commits a brutal murder - but it does not go unnoticed. Rose, a naive young waitress at a rundown cafe, has the unwitting power to destroy his crucial alibi, and Ida Arnold, a woman…

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Why read it?

5 authors picked Brighton Rock as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

John D. Nesbitt

Author

This novel lakes us into a somewhat seamy underclass of contemporary society. The unfeeling main character is very convincing.

From John's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Sam Tobin

Author

Everyone loves a bastard, and Pinkie, the hero of Brighton Rock, is such an awful bastard. He doesn’t like his friends, hates his girlfriend, and is driven by a pathetically brittle ego that can never be satisfied. But it’s the fact he’s so hopelessly trapped in the prison of his own angry, petty horizons that makes me love him. I love a doomed character.

When an author can make you know, it’s all going to end badly and still make you hope it won’t? That’s magic. I love it when I’m reading books that I can feel playing with my…

From Sam's list on characters who do unforgivably terrible things but still somehow end up the hero.

Charles Ardai

Author

Graham Greene’s writing has a profound moral gravity, and I found this story–of a petty criminal leading a desperate life on the rim of poverty while manipulating the woman in his life–to be a spectacle of human cruelty I couldn’t look away from.

Rose knows her man is no good but loves him anyway, unaware that he’s courted her solely to avoid prosecution for his crimes. After his death, she goes to Confession and takes solace from the slender thread of good in him–unaware that he has left a recording behind that will reveal the truth…

From Charles' list on hardboiled crime novels that will move you to tears.

Defection in Prague

By Ray C Doyle,

Book cover of Defection in Prague

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What is my book about?

Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.

Pete meets a Czechian agent who wants asylum. She has a murdered EU Commissioner’s diary containing clues to the civil unrest planned by the club, encrypted in algebraic chess notations. West seeks answers and links up with retired MI6 officer Tosh. While escaping would-be captors, they decode enough chess moves to reveal the anarchy of the…

Defection in Prague

By Ray C Doyle,

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Mark Chisnell

Author

It’s not strictly historical fiction since it was published in 1938 and set in pre-War Brighton, nor does it deal with the coming War, since Greene couldn’t know about that at the time. However, anyone interested in this moment in history should read one of its best novels by one of the period’s greatest writers.

From Mark's list on historical thrillers set just before WWII.

Neal W. Fandek

Author

I’d been reading Greene for a few years, his light entertainments (Travels with my Aunt), morality plays (The Power and the Glory), and thrillers, but this was the first Greene novel I read that weaved threads together I previously thought impossible, viz., faith and Catholicism, murder, sex, sociopaths, good bloody action, and a convincing backdrop in Brighton itself. The protagonist here is a vicious teen named Pinkie (yes, his sexuality is conflicted) who’s attracted to and utterly spooked by normal human connection, who also tries to be a good Catholic while he kills, who’s tracked down…

From Neal's list on psycho killers.