"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours,
that they meant to murder him..."nnGraham Greene's
chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare in the pre-war
underworld is a classic of its kind. nnPinkie, the teenage
gangster, is devoid of compassion or human feeling,
despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh.
Responsible for the razor slashes 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.
nHe 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.