'Brighton Rock'

A good book confuses the shit out of you for the first 50 pages only to go over what happened in detail those first 50 pages for it not to really matter.

I think. Maybe that's why I haven't published any of my novels. Gathering dust there on the shelves. I kid. I kid.

I think what confused me the most is Fred Hale leaving business cards around town for people to find and if they turn them into the newspaper, they can win 10 pounds. I guess this is a thing from the 1930s because it sounds like one of the most ridiculously awesome things ever. Imagining having a pretty bad day or even a so-so day and you're doing your usual thing and you turn around and find a card that gives you $50 (which I assume would be the equivalent for 10 pounds in the 1930s). That probably felt pretty good.

Brighton Rock's been turned into a play, a musical, a film (twice) and a radio program. Certainly, Pinkie is one of the best characters -- certainly in the sociopath genre -- in modern literature. Not unlike Alex in Clockwork Orange, a young man of his times and his environment. However, the pair are separated by Alex's need for sex and Pinkie's unanswered repulsion of human contact and sex. Not everything was carnal for Pinkie. It made the violence a bit more disturbing.