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
Nancy Hale said that "she meant it to be.". Her second novel, "Never Any More", published in 1934, was about the antagonism of three girls whose mothers are friends. By this time, Hale had divorced Hardin, with whom she had one son, Mark. In 1935, she married the journalist, Charles Wertenbaker and, in 1936, moved with him to Charlottesville, Virginia. That same year, she published her first collection of short stories, "The Earliest Dreams". She and Wertenbaker had a son, named William, in 1938, but the couple divorced in 1941. In 1942, Hale married Fredson Bowers, a professor of English at the