Brighton rock -graham Greene

Pinkie Brown, a teenage gangster wielding a razor blade and a bottle of vitriol, 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 full of easy certainties about what is right and wrong, has made it her mission to bring about justice and redemption.

Set against the seaside amusements and racetrack protection rackets of Brighton's pre-war underworld, Brighton Rock is both a gritty thriller and a study of a soul in torment. A classic of modern literature, it maps out the strange borderlines between holiness and savagery.