If I’d never read any Graham Greene novels before, this book might have put me off. Having killed a man for betraying the gang, Pinkie is unaware his victim had already made contact with Ida, a bright and bubbly woman, who, suspecting foul play when the man turns up dead, determines to find out the truth. In pre-war Brighton, a gang war propels seventeen-year-old Pinkie to lead his clan in a bid to take over from rival gangster Colleoni. When finished, the listener is sure to ponder some lofty moral issues to which Greene, a Catholic writer, withholds easy judgments. For the sheer joy of it she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hale's death. He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale's avenging angel. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil.

Pinkie is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Set in Brighton, England, among the criminal rabble, the book depicts the tragic career of a seventeen-year-old boy named Pinkie whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Colleoni. It is a fascinating study of evil, sin, and the 'appalling strangeness of the mercy of God,' a classic of its kind.

Originally published in 1938, Graham Greene's chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare is a masterpiece of psychological realism and often considered Graham Greene's best novel.

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