She tagged a ten best list of fictional detectives for Publishers Weekly, including:Ida Arnold (Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, 1938)Read about the other entries on the list.
It’s hardly doing justice to Brighton Rock to describe it as genre fiction, but a killing and a murderer are the heart of this book about faith and God.
The good-hearted but blowsy heroine Ida Arnold, our detective figure, goes after a killer with a truly modern mind. Pinkie, the young anti-hero, lacks motive apart from a nihilistic passion for violence and death. With its seamy, seaside-resort setting, its lonely and hopeless characters and its bleak outlook on life, Brighton Rock has much in common with the hard-edged noir fiction soon to come.
Brighton Rock is among Alex Barclay's top ten psychological thrillers and Linda Grant's five best books with novel approaches to kindness.
--Marshal Zeringue
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