Both The View from Pompey's Head and its prequel, The Light Infantry Ball (1960), were finalists for the National Book Award for Fiction.

However, just as one cannot argue that Melville's Typee (1846) was a better book because it sold more copies than Moby-Dick (1851), so it is equally impossible to claim that The View from Pompey's Head was a masterpiece because it was so popular.

The story begins when the Manhattan attorney Anson Page (Richard Egan) returns to his Southern roots after 15 years, arriving in Pompey's Head, South Carolina, to investigate the mystery surrounding missing royalties due famous author Garvin Wales (Sidney Blackmer).

In the small Southern town, Page sees the same problems of racial and class prejudices that had once prompted him to leave Pompey's Head.

However, he also encounters his former flame, Dinah Blackford (Dana Wynter), who has married the businessman Mickey Higgins (Cameron Mitchell).