The first of Greene's works to explore Catholic themes and moral issues, its treatment of class privilege and the problem of evil is paradoxical and ambivalent.

Hale meets middle-aged Ida Arnold by chance in a pub and then on the Palace Pier as the mob is closing in, but he is snatched away without her realising what has happened to him.

Since Rose had spotted Spicer leaving the card, Pinkie realises that she can now disprove his trail of deception and must take measures to prevent this.

Her enquiries soon establish the broad outlines of the story, even though Rose consistently refuses to co-operate and warns Pinkie of Ida's investigation.

Discovering that Spicer is still alive, Pinkie throws him to his death from an unstable staircase in their lodgings and implicates their terrified solicitor Prewitt[note 1] into helping him cover up the murder.

Feeling trapped, and with what remains of his gang disintegrating, Pinkie proposes a suicide pact to Rose, on the pretence that Ida is close to having him arrested by the police.

Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also noted as the first of Greene's series of religious novels and deals with Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of sin and the basis of morality.

Primarily, rock is a hard type of confectionery sold at seaside resorts, with the town's name embedded in the centre and elongated down its length, so that it is revealed wherever the stick is broken.

Then there is the irreconcilable difference between the Catholic ideological interpretations of good and evil and Ida's humanistic moral intuition, which goes far beyond a simple contrast of alternatives.

Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods - Good and Evil.This leads to a further paradox on which the novel dwells more than once: that, their common origin apart, Pinkie and Rose are so much opposites that they make a whole.

[10] In Britain the following year, Frank Harvey's play ran for a hundred performances at the Garrick Theatre in the West End, starring Richard Attenborough and Dulcie Gray.

[14] In the new century, Rowan Joffé directed a film adaptation which was released in 2010, starring Sam Riley[15] as Pinkie, Andrea Riseborough as Rose and Helen Mirren as Ida Arnold.

[17] In 1994, Ken Whitmore adapted the story for a five-episode BBC Radio dramatisation, directed by John Yorke and starring Steven Mackintosh as Pinkie.