Brighton Palace Pier The Graham Greene novel "Brighton Rock" featured the Palace Pier. John Boulting's 1947 film adaptation helped established "low life" subculture in Brighton, and the climax of the film is set on it, where gangleader Pinkie Brown (played by Richard Attenborough) falls to his death. The 1953 B movie "Girl on a Pier" is set around the Palace Pier and also features the clash between holidaymakers and gangsters in Brighton. The Who's 1973 concept album "Quadrophenia" was inspired in part by band leader Pete Townshend spending a night underneath the pier in March 1964. It is a pivotal part of the
Murder at the ABA in New York City and absorbed enough "local color" to invent the setting, characters and "gimmick" of his mystery story. Ashmead then informed him that Doubleday needed the book in time for the next year's convention, which meant that Asimov had only three months in which to write it. (The only other novel he had written in such a short time was "Fantastic Voyage", which was the novelization of a pre-existing screenplay.) Consequently, the novel is full of odd constructions, such as footnotes where Just and Asimov debate the latter's storytelling style, which Asimov knew critics would pan. He said