"Graham Greene Centennial, 1904-2004"--Cover.

Includes bibliographical references (p. xv-xvi).

Set in Brighton among the criminal rabble, the story depicts the tragic career of a 17 year-old boy named Pinkie whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Calleoni

Presents a reprint of Graham Greene's 1938 novel about Pinkie Brown, a teenage gangster who tries to establish himself in the Brighton underworld, describing his criminal ambitions, and the events surrounding the murder of corrupt newspaperman Charles Hale.

"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him..." Graham Greene's chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare in the pre-war underworld is a classic of its kind. Pinkie, a teenage gangster on the rise, is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of both the spirit and the flesh. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed mob boss Kite and also for the death of Hale, a reporter who threatened the livelihood of the mob, Pinkie is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, Pinkie is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands. He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale's avenging angel. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hale's death. For the sheer joy of it, she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice. This Penguin Classics Deluxe edition features an introduction by J. M. Coetzee.

Adult