Graham Greene's modern classic of violence and gang warfare is set in the dark, seedy underworld of 1930s Brighton. Pinkie, a teenage gangster, is devoid of human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Responsible for the razor flashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands. He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale's avenging angel, who determines to bring the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice.
'Greene had... a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature.'
John Le Carre, Guardian
