A novel occurs as murder thriller set in 1930s Brighton.

Fred Hale, the previous mobster, has returned to Brighton to anonymously distribute cards for the newspaper competition (this is according to "Lobby Lud"). A antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teen sociopath & up-and-industrious mobster world health organization has upright taken control of the gang Hale experienced belonged to. Ida Arnold, a variety-kind-hearted & right woman, is drawn into the action by a risk meeting by using the slaying victim. Whenever Little finger murders Hale, his tries to handle his tracks lead to a chain of newly crimes & to an ill-ill-starred marriage to Rose, the waitress world health organization unwittingly has the power to kill his alibi. Ida proceeds to place herself at a centre of cases, within section to protect Rose from either a ruthless, deeply disturbed son she has married.

Although seemingly an underworld thriller, the book is as well a right exploration of the nature and severity of sin and the basis of morality (Pinkie & Rose come Roman Catholics, and their beliefs come contrasted by owning Ida's heavy however non-religious moral sensibility). This theme was related Greene's possess Catholicism, which he explored farther around more aspects of his act.

Greene & Terence Rattigan wrote the screenplay for the 1947 film adaptation, produced and directed by John and Roy Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough as Pinkie, Carol Marsh as Rose, William Hartnell as Dallow, and Hermione Baddeley as Ida. A climax of a film will require place at a West Pier (although the book doesn't specify which pier). A film is considered one of a virtually all successful British films noir. In the United States, a film was freed under the title Young Scarface.