A teenage sociopath rises to power in Britain's criminal underworld in this "brilliant and uncompromising" thriller ( The New York Times ). Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised amid the casual violence and corruption in the dire prewar Brighton slums, has left his final judgment in the hands of God. On the streets, impelled by his own twisted moral doctrine, he leads a motley pack of gangsters whose sleazy little rackets have most recently erupted...

Includes the unabridged text of "The Heart of the Matter," "Orient Express," "A Burnt-out Case," "The Third Man," "The Quiet American," "Loser Takes All," and "The Power and the Glory."