The Gorse Trilogy is a series of three novels, the last published works of the author Patrick Hamilton.
[1] The stories follow the anti-hero Ernest Ralph Gorse, whose heartlessness and lack of scruple are matched only by the inventiveness and panache with which he swindles his victims.
He is thought to have been based on the real-life con-man and murderer Neville George Heath, who was executed in 1946.
Graham Greene called The West Pier "the best book written about Brighton",[3] while L.P. Hartley said, "The entertainment value of this brilliantly told story could hardly be higher.
[3] Gorse also appears as a secondary villain in the novel Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman.