Before his death in 1962, Patrick Hamilton was equally known as a novelist and as a playwright. Today he's mostly remembered for his plays Rope and Gaslight (and the movie adaptations of them). While Hamilton's novels could not be described as thrillers, they share with the plays their author's great skill at building suspense, turning his stories of marginalized Londoners into page-turners and earning him the admiration of contemporary novelists like David Lodge and Sarah Waters.

In Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, barmaid Ella nurses a silent passion for fellow-waiter Bob; Bob is infatuated with a prostitute named Jenny; and the unctuous Mr. Eccles has designs on Ella. A pub in a run-down section of prewar London is at the center of this three-part drama of three lonely people whose lives are set on irrevocable paths of tragedy by poverty, greed, and-above all-the undeniable need for love. Hamilton is remarkably attuned to the subtleties of desire and disdain as he details Bob's descent into obsession, Jenny's fall from innocent housemaid to jaded manipulator, and Ella's dignified struggles to overcome her mean circumstances. Each of these stories enhances the complexity and richness of the others and shows that, for Hamilton, life presents no villains, no heroes, only humans engaged in the common and never-ending struggle for fulfillment.

Patrick Hamilton may be best known now for the plays Rope and Gaslight and for the classic Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor movies they inspired, but in his heyday he was no less famous for his brooding tales of London life. Featuring a Dickensian cast of pubcrawlers, prostitutes, lowlifes, and just plain losers who are looking for love--or just an ear to bend--Hamilton's novels are a triumph of deft characterization, offbeat humor, unlikely compassion, and raw suspense. In recent years, Hamilton has undergone a remarkable revival, with his champions including Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Nick Hornby, and Sarah Waters.

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a tale of obsession and betrayal that centers on a seedy pub in a run-down part of London. Bob the waiter skimps and saves and fantasizes about writing a novel, until he falls for the pretty prostitute Jenny and blows it all. Kindly Ella, Bob's co-worker, adores Bob, but is condemned to enjoy nothing more than the attentions of the insufferable Mr. Eccles; Jenny, out on the street, is out of love, hope, and money. We watch with pity and horror as these three vulnerable and yet compellingly ordinary people meet and play out bitter comedies of longing and frustration.

A timeless classic of sleazy London life in the 1930s, a world of streets, full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars.