DESCRIBED by Graham Greene as “the best book written about Brighton”, The West Pier isn’t just a splendid evocation of the city between the wars.

It also provides the introduction to Patrick Hamilton’s last great character – the psychopathic swindler Ralph Ernest Gorse – as he embarks on a criminal lifestyle by swindling the unsuspecting beauty Esther Downes.

Now playwright, actor and producer Matt Thompson from Brighton-based Fellow Traveller Theatre Company is organising an evening dedicated to the novel, combining a literary discussion with an extended extract from his forthcoming stage version.

“While I was doing a very long tour I took The Gorse Trilogy with me as a reminder of home,” says Thompson. “I was living a very Hamilton existence in anonymous hotel rooms reading his books.”

Gorse is schooled in Hove, and carries out an assault on a young girl underneath the stands at Sussex County Cricket Club – the venue where the schoolboys later drill during the First World War.

The club also had a significance for the ten-year-old Hamilton, who was watching a cricket match on the day the First World War was declared, a moment recreated in the book.

“A marching band walked on to the ground and interrupted the match,” says Thompson. “Hamilton regarded it as a metaphor for lost innocence in childhood. It’s really special that we are there.”

The majority of the action in the novel comes from a holiday the grown-up Gorse takes in Brighton with two former schoolfriends. The trio pick up Downes and her plain friend Gertrude Perks on the titular pier in the hope of “getting off” with the girls.

Although the attractive Downes seems more interested in his good-lucking chum Peter Ryan, Gorse decides he wants her as a whim. He launches a plot to steal her and her money away from Ryan, using poison pen letters, a borrowed car and the glamorous cocktail bar of the Brighton Metropole.

“For Gorse it’s about finding out the extent of his own power,” says Thompson. “He’s not really interested in Esther at all, and her money is insignificant to him.

“It’s about whether he can do it or not – it’s a testing ground and a key moment to his becoming a psychopath.”

Future books in the trilogy see Gorse move outside of Sussex to exercise his skills on an unsuspecting widow in Mr Stimpson And Mr Gorse and a ditzy barmaid in Unknown Assailant.

Thompson believes ill-health prevented Hamilton from taking the character as far as he had initially envisaged – with all three novels hinting at murders and depravation to come in Gorse’s life.

“Hamilton was very interested in the case of Neville Heath who was hanged for murdering and raping a couple of women in 1947,” says Thompson.

“He had masqueraded as an RAF veteran and charmed people out of their money. He progressed in the way Gorse progresses in the books [Gorse pretends to have fought in the First World War despite his young age].

“The original intention was that it would end up in murder, but Hamilton’s health failed him.”

The evening is set to be divided between a literary discussion between crime writer Laura Wilson, Hamilton’s biographer Nigel Jones and historian Fred Gray, a jazz performance by Edana Minghella, and a performance of the first five scenes from Thompson’s adaptation of the story.

“For us it is a showcase to start building an audience for the play,” says Thompson.

“The story was the basis for The Charmer starring Nigel Havers in the 1980s, and there was a version staged as part of the Brighton Festival, although I couldn’t find a written copy of it anywhere.”

Fellow Traveller has launched a crowd-funding campaign on zequs.com to help stage the finished play.

“We want to do something for Brighton, but also create a touring version,” says Thompson, who has set all the action in a bar.

“We want to make it an immersive experience. It’s about finding the right space and the right time to do it.

“People are fascinated by villains. Gorse finds Esther’s weaknesses slowly, carefully and subtly – which really lends itself to an intimate staging.”