Brighton Rock is a curious combination of prototype thriller and morality play. It starts suspensefully with Hale desperately but unsuccessfully trying to escape a mob hit on him in pre-WWII Brighton, England. Pinkie, the teenaged, potentially sociopathic leader of the group, goes to extreme measures to cover his tracks while the police has ruled Hale's murder as a natural death. A woman Hale tries to snare as a potential witness to protect himself, Ida Arnold, ultimately becomes his avenging angel. Although there is a sense that the cover-up can't go on much longer with Ida on the trail, Greene's dense, clause-and-comma-rich prose lingers over the dynamics within this small criminal group, and evokes a sense of the setting with period slang. However, the characters seem like stand-ins for a broader message on justice, morality, religion (Pinkie is a Roman Catholic), sin, and redemption. I probably wouldn't have read Brighton Rock if it weren't on the list of 1001 books you must read before you die, but I'm glad I did.

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