Brighton Rock by Graham Greene Vintage, HK$104
Graham Greene was a natural for cinematic adaptation. An influential film reviewer, he wrote fiction that drew heavily on movies and vice versa: he began his script for the classic The Third Man by writing the story as a novel. Brighton Rock too was written with the cinema in mind. It has already been adapted once: in 1947's extraordinary version starring Richard Attenborough. A new version is about to be released, but it is well worth purchasing this new edition with an introduction by J.M. Coetzee. Set in 1938, the story follows the violent life and times of a 17-year-old gangster called Pinkie who, after murdering a man named Hale, terrorises his colleagues, the public and Rose, the girl who falls for him. This may sound like classic noir, but it is set, with knowing irony, in Brighton, the closest that England comes to having a holiday town. Pinkie is a wonderfully complex anti-hero: tortured by Catholic guilt, filled with hatred of the world and its inhabitants, and capable of flashes of humanity. His antithesis, Rose, is beautifully drawn; so is his unlikely nemesis, the barmaid Ida. As thrilling to read now as it must have been in 1938, Brighton Rock may well be the novel of the year.