In "The End of the Party," a game of hide-and-seek takes a terrifying turn in the dark. In "The Innocent," a romantic gets a rude awakening when he finds a hidden keepsake from a childhood crush. A husband's sexual indiscretion is revealed in a most public and embarrassing way in "The Blue Film." A rebellious teen's flight from her petit bourgeois life includes a bad boy, a gun, and a plan in "A Drive in the Country." In "A Little Place off the Edgware Road," a suicidal man's encounter with a stranger in a grubby cinema seals his fate. A young boy is ushered into a dark world when he discovers the secrets adults hide in "The Basement Room." And in "When Greek Meets Greek," a clever con between two scoundrels carries an unexpected sting. In these and more than a dozen other stories, Greene confronts his usual themes of betrayal and vengeance, love and hate, faith and doubt, guilt and grief, and pity and pursuit.
"The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings . . . A master of storytelling."
V. S. Pritchett, The Times (London)
"In a class by himself . . . The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."
William Golding
"A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy."
