Brighton Rock (novel) Brighton Rock (novel) Charles "Fred" Hale comes to Brighton on assignment to distribute cards anonymously for a newspaper competition (a variant of "Lobby Lud"; in this case, the name of the person to be spotted is "Kolley Kibber"). The antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teenage sociopath and up-and-coming gangster. Hale had betrayed the former leader of the gang Pinkie now controls, by writing an article in the "Daily Messenger" about a slot machine racket for which the gang was responsible. Ida Arnold, a plump, kind-hearted and decent woman, is drawn into the action by a chance meeting
The High Commissioner (novel) to be a surveyor under the Colombo Plan. Malone returns to Australia, intending to ask Lisa to marry him. Cleary says he got the idea for the novel from meeting an Australian policeman he knew walking out of Australia House in London one day. He was on six months leave but Cleary wondered what if he had come to arrest the Australian High Commissioner for murder. The first sentence of the books was: "The Premier said, "We want you to go to London and arrest the High Commissioner for murder."" This opening garnered much critical praise and a striking first