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
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