The way that Pinkie tries to force people to accept his version of reality has a lot in common with certain totalitarian governments today (another thing to regret, alas). Pinkie is also smart but he’s anything but sentimental, so the two characters act as a foil, each to the other, like diametrical opposite components in an interlocking pair that makes a different shape. Ida tipples during the day and has a generous figure that she uses to her advantage but she’s smart as well as sentimental. Like Vera, Ida feels a deep compassion for her fellow human beings and it is this that drives her to investigate the death of a man she’d met only briefly one day in Brighton. Ida reminded me strongly of Vera Stanhope, the detective in the ITV network’s crime drama ‘Vera’ which is a favourited of mine on Sunday nights (a series regrettably ended at the end of August). Greene’s inventions – Pinkie, the 17-year-old gangster, and Ida Arnold, the middle-aged local who likes a laugh and a Guinness in the afternoon – are fabulous. The book is not long but it wastes no time and a good amount of action is packed into a series of eventful seaside days.
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