Greene's Brighton isn't a light atmosphered tourist summer destination, where children are building sand castles and eating rock candy, but it's a place where gangs are hiding in dark street corners and killing each other. The mood of the bok is quite unusual. Brighton is shown as rainy, chilly and bleak, but Greene's way of writing is light and picturesque. Therefore it wasn't oppressive despite also the great themes of good and evil, and was quite a quick read during plane and train rides (on my trip to Amsterdam and Antwerp).

Pinkie Brown is a cold sociopath, who doesn't understand love and is repulsed by sex. When he meets waitress Rose and has to make sure she doesn't talk, the latter especially is obsessively in his mind. Despite the stuff that happens after the meeting of these two, in my opinion this isn't a love story. Not even a crooked one. Pinkie isn't necessarily thoroughly evil, and is for example able to be afraid, but from the start it's quite clear that he can do anything to save his own ass. At least I didn't get a picture of him doing anything for his gang members for example, but instead his greatest motive was his instinct of self preservation.