Celebrated as a vehicle for Veronica Lake and the film that announced Alan Ladd, This Gun for Hire diverges from Greene’s novel, A Gun for Sale, in setting­—moving from London to San Francisco—and therefore in geopolitical significance. However, the human concept of the story remained unchanged: a portrait of a laconic, too-smart-for-his-own-good gangster whose magnetic charm is weighted by an unsettlingly calm talent for violence. Unlike his literary counterpart, This Gun for Hire’s Philip Raven is an assassin who has killed a chemist, rather than a government minister, but both versions of the character must then go on the run, seek revenge and become entangled with a charismatic nightclub singer in over her head. Unlike many of Greene’s thrillers, this one is classic noir, with its anti-hero more mysterious and tragic than uncomplicatedly sinister. In Tuttle’s film the hero’s moral ambiguity is used to keep the romance interesting and the suspense taut by rendering Ladd’s next move deliciously obscure.