Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors but try as I might, I could not get into this book. I felt too many steps removed from the action to follow what was happening or to have any sort of connection with the characters.

One of the best opening lines I've ever encountered in the book. The final line is EVEN BETTER.

** spoiler alert ** Something more like 3.7. This it the first Greene novel I've read all the way through, although I have read pieces of The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory. There's three main characters: Ida, who represents Right; Pinkie (aka "the Boy"), who's Wrong; and Rose, who is Confusion and Naïveté. Greene does a better job of making Pinkie a villain than some authors (I'm looking at you, Dickens) and Rose is well-demonstrated as a naïve little girl. Ida is a bit less well-drawn because while she is constantly working the background to get Pinkie, we don't see as much of her as we do Pinkie and Rose. But she isn't a particularly ambiguous character, and we do get a sense of her as a person. There's just not as much of her as I'd have liked there to be. And the ending: it took me a second to understand the last sentence. (Actually, I had to look it up. But now I get it!)

One of the darkest explorations of the line between good and evil. A haunting offering from Greene, who clearly knew the stakes of this life.