An excellent copy with light toning to pages, spine of dust jacket with some. To Pinkie, allergic as he is to intimacy, these are interchangeable fates. First printing of first American edition. Stated 'Published in June 1938' on copyright page, with no additional. Red and black cloth, title on spine in silver. To do this he must silence Rose – waitress, fellow 'Roman', key witness, and as innocent and youthful as her name suggests – either by marriage or by death. First American edition of Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, in the publishers first state dust jacket. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie is trying to cover up his involvement in Hale's murder. From the opening line – 'Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him' – the narrative has the pull of a thriller. first time in nine years thanks to the release of an expanded 3LP edition (16). This reissue, with an introduction by JM Coetzee, coincides with the book's adaptation (again) to screen by Rowan Joffe, setting it in 1964 with Sam Riley in the lead role Joffe's foreword to this edition is almost an apologia for daring to remake John Boulting's 1947 version, famous for Richard Attenborough's ferocious performance as Pinkie.Īs well as bringing Greene commercial success, Brighton Rock also heralded the author's emergence as a 'Catholic novelist'. Rounding out this weeks Top 5, Brighton-born indie-rock outfit Lovejoy. I t is the tension between the two faces of Brighton – the illuminated tourist bling and the gritty, mobster-laced industry behind the façade – that sets up the intrigue in Greene's classic 1938 novel of good and evil and it's the menacing, sinisterly youthful antihero Pinkie who continues to fascinate today.

Brighton rock first edition