Book summary

In Graham Greene's brilliant and harrowing psychological portrait of a sadistic young gangster, published in 1938, Pinkie, the teenaged head of a Brighton mob, becomes implicated in a murder early in the story. The only possible witness to the crime is Rose, a naive young waitress in a teashop who mistakes Pinkie's nervous inquiries for a sign of affection and falls in love with him. When Pinkie learns that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband in criminal cases, he marries Rose despite his feelings of distaste for her. All the while, however, Pinkie is being pursued by Ida, a prostitute who is obsessed with bringing him to justice. As Greene commented in his autobiography, "The Pinkies are the real Peter Pans--doomed to be juvenile for a lifetime. They have something of a fallen angel about them, a morality which once belonged to another place." This view suggests that Greene's preoccupation with religious themes, which became explicit in his later novels, began with this relatively early work. This was also the book that made Greene's reputation as a major literary figure.

Media reviews

"This is no book for those who would turn delicate noses away from the gutters and sewers of life; but there is nothing that could give the faintest gratification to snickerers. If it is as downright as surgery, it is, also, as clean as a clinic. There is not an entirely admirable character in it; but there is not one that can, by any chance, be forgotten nor one that could be set aside as untrue to life....The prose is terse and vigorous; apt to break out unexpectedly into imagery that is both original and illuminating. Counsel for the prosecution has seldom presented a more overwhelmingly convincing case."