Graham Greene provides us with a masterpiece of psychological realism, a fascinating study of evil, sin, and the “appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” Among Brighton’s criminal rabble, a seventeen-year-old boy named Pinkie strives to be a gang leader. His calamitous childhood and repressed sexuality together create a force of evil that is fascinating yet repellent. When finished, the listener is sure to ponder some lofty moral issues to which Greene, a Catholic writer, withholds easy judgments.