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• I hadn't read anything by Greene for years and then this, what he describes as an entertainment. Well, I certainly found it un-put-downable:talk about 'noir' - it was more noir than many a Hollywood film of the 30s and 40s. Right and wrong have no meaning for Pinkie nor even for the 'good' Rose although the starker and stronger Good and Evil are supposed to leave some imprint (because of being Catholics?). Murder apparently for Pinkie does not have any connection with evil as compared to sex: until he almost forces himself to lose his virginity on his wedding night, it's the sexual act that arouses the most horror and distaste in his very disturbed psyche.Greene didn't write this as a moral tract and it works well as a story. Who will survive, who won't, will Ida succeed in her pursuit for justice for Fred's killers, and Pinkie? What of him. Indeed, what of him. Words fail me.For me, excellent pacy writing, plus descriptive details that reinforce the seediness of the 'other' Brighton: even the beach is mucky. The blue skies and the invigorating atmosphere of the Bank Holiday crowd in the opening paragraph are but a tease.

  5.00 out of 5

  hazelk

• Reread after the excellent recent film, for the first time since school. An excellent example of how a novel can be religious & psychologically & morally complex – and thrilling at the same time. The world of Brighton spivs stays in the forefront of the mind, whilst questions of damnation & grace bubble beneath the surface.

  4.50 out of 5

  marek2010

• I feel a little off assigning this to the mystery category - it's so much deeper than that. A 17-year-old gunsel, favored by a gang-leader recently gunned down, takes leadership of a small gang competing to control the Brighton racecourse betting. When the gang kills an informant, they have the bad luck to awaken the interest of ida, a woman looking for a little excitement in life, and one with a pragmatic sense of right and wrong.Pinkie, the gunsel, a Catholic from the slums, has good and evil on his mind, which is a very different thing entirely. Although the murdered man is judged to have died of natural causes, Ida's nosing around upsets the gang, and Pinkie in particular, who commits another murder to keep one of his gang quiet, and forces himself to marry a young waitress who can provide evidence against them. Not that she would. 16 years old and another Catholic, she doesn't see Pinkie's sexual disgust, takes his lies and silence as love, and feels she would go to the ends of earth and heaven for him.The writing is marvelous, never more than needs to be said, but atmospheric all the same, viscerally communicating the grimy lower-class hopelessness of Brighton and the people in it. The bigger question - which is true, good and evil or right and wrong - is left to the reader at the end.

  4.50 out of 5

  ffortsa

• A smart, gripping thriller about seaside thugs, Brighton Rock delivers intense character studies of evil and innocence and the energetic, exact language typical of Graham Greene. Though set in England, the novel seems just as exotic as Greene's stories set in Asia, West Africa, or Latin America; for me, at any rate, 1930s Brighton boardwalk life was a seedy revelation.

  4.50 out of 5

  joshberg

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