Brighton Rock – Graham Greene (1938, 1957)[ENG][DjVu|scan|OCR]{Kaefer}

Half of London pours into Brighton on a bank holiday, and if one man dies there on the beach, who will pause for more than a curious moment? So they reasoned, and so, in secret, they acted. But there was one among the restive crowd – a woman, big, happy, bubbling with life – who cared very little for convention and a great deal for fair play. It was she who sensed a murder that no man saw, and it is her persistence that leads the reader through the labyrinth of macabre terror lying behind the esplanade at Brighton.
In rapid, taut strokes, Graham Greene lays bare the soul of a boy of seventeen, whose shadow seared the lives of the men who followed him and the girl who loved him, who walked the bright esplanade of the seaside resort with apathy on his face and murder in his heart. Pinkie, the boy with death at his fingertips, was not just bad – he worshipped in the temple of evil as his parents had worshipped in the house of God. Crime, in his dark mind, was a release so deep and satisfying that he had no need for drink or women or the love of his fellows. He is an astounding character, sinister and fascinating.
In Brighton Rock there is deep mystery, and yet it is no ‘mystery story’. Here is rare adventure and yet more than an ‘adventure tale’ – a psychological action-story. It is the literature of excitement, distilled from a rare blending of mood, scene, and character – a novel which, when it is finished, seems to have been injected into the veins.