A Gun for Sale
First edition
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| Author | Graham Greene |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | William Heinemann |
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Publication date
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1936 |
| Media type | Hardcover (first edition) |
| OCLC | 59545065 |
A Gun For Sale is a 1936 novel by Graham Greene about a criminal called Raven, a man dedicated to ugly deeds. When he is paid, with stolen notes, for killing the Minister of War, he becomes a man on the run. Tracking down the agent who double-crossed him, and eluding the police simultaneously, he becomes both the hunter and the hunted.
The novel prefigures Greene's later, more famous, work, Brighton Rock, wherein Pinkie Brown's killing of Hale sets the events of the novel in motion in much the same way that Raven's assassination of the Minister of War sows the seeds for conflict in A Gun For Sale.
Raven, an English assassin, is hired to kill a government minister in a European country (in fact, Czechoslovakia), an act calculated to provoke a European war. Returning to London, he is paid off in cash by his contact, who uses the false name "Cholmondely". However, when Raven starts spending the notes, he discovers they were stolen. Furious at being cheated and hunted by the police who think he was the thief, without a ticket he follows "Cholmondeley" onto a train going to Nottwich.
Also on the train is Anne Crowder, a chorus girl travelling to start work in a pantomime. Her fiancée, Mather, is the detective leading the hunt for Raven. At Nottwich, Raven uses Anne's ticket to get off the station and, since she has recognised him, he takes her to an empty house to kill her. Escaping, she does not report what has happened, out of sympathy for Raven, but instead goes to the theatre to work. There, she is asked out to dinner by one of the backers, Davis, who is "Cholmondely". After dinner he takes her to a house where, when he realizes she knows about his involvement with Raven, he smothers her, though he does not kill her.
The owner of the house helps herself to Anne's smart monogrammed handbag and the next day is seen with it in the street by Raven, who forces his way into the house and finds Anne weak but still alive. She agrees to cooperate with him, since both want Davis/Cholmondely dead, and he takes her to a hideout he has found. While in hiding, they discuss Raven's murder of the government minister; Raven also talks to Anne about his childhood and the difficult circumstances in which he discovered his mother's suicide—details that will anticipate Raven's own death and the imagery the novel utilizes to depict his final moments.
In the night, the hideout is surrounded by police, led by Jimmy Mather, and Anne decoys them so that Raven can escape. Nonetheless, Raven has to shoot and wound a policeman in order to flee. There is gas drill practise, in preparation for war, and everyone, except Raven, is wearing a gas-mask, so forces a student participating in a rag to undress and give him his clothes and gas-mask.
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