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 naïve young waitress at a rundown café, has the unwitting power to destroy his crucial alibi, and Ida Arnold, a woman bursting with easy certainties about what is right and wrong, has made it her mission to bring about justice and redemption.

Set among the seaside amusements and dilapidated boarding houses 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 border between piety and savagery.

With an introduction by Professor Richard Greene.