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A clash of ideologies

Pinkie and Ida in Brighton Rock

Fergus Parnaby examines to what extent the dynamic relationship between the criminal and the detective drives the action in Graham Greene’s groundbreaking crime thriller

Sam Riley as Pinkie and Andrea Riseborough as Rose in Brighton Rock (2010)

AQA (B): Paper 2 Texts and genres: ‘Elements of crime writing’

Graham Greene’s 1938 novel Brighton Rock is a crime thriller with a difference. Originally written as a straightforward thriller with the simple aim of making money for its author, in the view of John Carey (1993) it subverts the traditional ‘whodunnit’ form by revealing the identity of the killers early on, and switching instead to a study of the nature of the criminal, Pinkie, and his nemesis, Ida Arnold.

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Previous

Elsinore’s ‘unweeded garden’: Hamlet and the Fall of Man

Next

What’s so amusing?: ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High’

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