The big book of this YA autumn is clearly—and justifiably—Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War…. Too many young adult novels only promise an outspoken revelation of the relevant. The Chocolate War delivers the goods.

The goods in the story are 20,000 boxes of chocolates that a depraved teaching brother means for the students of a tottering parochial school to sell. Sweet charity is the mask for Brother Leon's sharp and shady fund-raising. Since nothing is petty to the institutionalized, the chocolate sale consumes the school.

The plot paces to a cataclysmic conclusion. The young will understand the outcome. They won't like it, but they'll understand.

The Chocolate War is surely the most uncompromising novel ever directed to the "12 and up reader"—and very likely the most necessary. It depicts the mass psychology behind the looming menace of the gangs that have never been more omnipotent than now. In...