The Third Man

By Graham Greene

This noir classic by the "superb storyteller" is the basis for the movie named the best British film of all time by the British Film Institute (The New York Times).

 


Almost-broke pulp author Rollo Martins sets out for Vienna after receiving an invitation from his old friend Harry Lime, who might have a financial opportunity for him. But when he arrives, he's shocked to learn that Lime is dead in what appeared to be an accident—and that his pal had been under investigation for racketeering. That raises questions some questions for Martins, so he starts combing the postwar ruins of the Austrian capital to find out for himself what happened to Harry Lime . . .


 

The Third Man is one of the best-known works by Graham Greene, author of The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, and The End of the Affair—famed for his complex, philosophical novels, and compelling tales of crime, espionage, and suspense.


 


"The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists . . . A master of storytelling." —V. S. Pritchett, The Times (London)


 


"Greene had wit and grace . . . and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature." —John LeCarre


 


"In a class by himself." —William Golding


 


An enormously popular writer who was also one of the most significant novelists of his time." —Newsweek

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 21, 2025
• ISBN: 9798337200231

Graham Greene

Graham Greene (1904–1991) is recognized as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, achieving both literary acclaim and popular success. His best known works include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, and The Power and the Glory. After leaving Oxford, Greene first pursued a career in journalism before dedicating himself full-time to writing with his first big success, Stamboul Train. He became involved in screenwriting and wrote adaptations for the cinema as well as original screenplays, the most successful being The Third Man. Religious, moral, and political themes are at the root of much of his work, and throughout his life he traveled to some of the wildest and most volatile parts of the world, which provided settings for his fiction. Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour.  

Book preview

PREFACE

The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen. Like many love affairs it started at a dinner table and continued with many headaches in many places: Vienna, Venice, Ravello, London, Santa Monica.

Most novelists, I suppose, carry round in their heads or in their notebooks the first ideas for stories that have never come to be written. Sometimes one turns them over after many years and thinks regretfully that they would have been good once, in a time now dead. So, twenty years back, on the flap of an envelope, I had written an opening paragraph: I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, among the host of strangers in the Strand. I, no more than my hero, had pursued Harry, so when Sir Alexander Korda asked me to write a film for Carol Reed—to follow our Fallen Idol—I had nothing more to offer than this paragraph. Though Korda wanted a film about the four-power occupation of Vienna, he was prepared to let me pursue the tracks of Harry Lime.

To me it is almost impossible to write a film play without first writing a story. Even a film depends on more than plot, on a certain measure of characterization, on mood and atmosphere; and these seem to me almost impossible to capture for the first time in the dull shorthand of a script. One can reproduce an effect caught in another medium, but one cannot make the first act of creation in script form. One must have the sense of more material than one needs to draw on. The Third Man, therefore, though never intended for publication, had to start as a story before it began those apparently interminable transformations from one treatment to another.

On these treatments Carol Reed and I worked closely together, covering so many feet of carpet a day, acting scenes at each other. No third ever joined our conferences; so much value lies in the clear cut-and-thrust of argument between two people. To the novelist, of course, his novel is the best he can do with a particular subject; he cannot help resenting many of the changes necessary for turning it into a film or a play; but The Third Man was never intended to be more than the raw material for a picture. The reader will notice many differences between the story and the film, and he should not imagine these changes were forced on an unwilling author: as likely as not they were suggested by the author. The film, in fact, is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the story.

Some of these changes have obvious superficial reasons. The choice of an American instead of an English star involved a number of alterations. For example, Mr. Joseph Cotten quite reasonably objected to the name Rollo. The name had to be an absurd one, and the name Holley occurred to me when I remembered that figure of fun, the American poet Thomas Holley Chivers. An American, too, could hardly have been mistaken for the great English writer Dexter, whose literary character bore certain echoes of the gentle genius of Mr. E. M. Forster. The confusion of identities would have been impossible, even if Carol Reed had not rightly objected to a rather far-fetched situation involving a great deal of explanation that increased the length of a film already far too long. Another minor point: in deference to American opinion a Rumanian was substituted for Cooler, since Mr. Orson Welles’ engagement had already supplied us with one American villain. (Incidentally, the popular line of dialogue concerning Swiss cuckoo clocks was written into the script by Mr. Welles himself.)

One of the very few major disputes between Carol Reed and myself concerned the ending, and he has been proved triumphantly right. I held the view that an entertainment of this kind, which in England we call a thriller, was too light an affair to carry the weight of an unhappy ending. Reed on his side felt that my ending—indeterminate though it was, with no words spoken—would strike the audience, who had just seen Harry die, as unpleasantly cynical. I admit I was only half convinced; I was afraid few people would wait in their seats during the girl’s long walk from the graveside and that they would leave the cinema under the impression that the ending was as conventional as mine and more drawn-out. I had not given enough consideration to the mastery of Reed’s direction, and at that stage, of course, we neither of us could have anticipated Reed’s brilliant discovery of Mr. Karas, the zither player.

The episode of the Russians kidnapping Anna (a perfectly possible incident in Vienna) was eliminated at a fairly late stage. It was not satisfactorily tied into the story, and it threatened to turn the film into a propagandist picture. We had no desire to move people’s political emotions; we wanted to entertain them, to frighten them a little, to make them laugh.

Reality, in fact, was only a background to a fairy tale; nonetheless the story of the penicillin racket is based on a truth all the more grim because so many of the agents were more innocent than Joseph Harbin. The other day in London a surgeon took two friends to see the film. He was surprised to find them subdued and depressed by a picture he had enjoyed. They then told him that at the end of the war when they were with the Royal Air Force they had themselves sold penicillin in Vienna. The possible consequences of their act had never before occurred to them.

Boston, February 1950

I

O

NE NEVER

knows when the blow may fall. When I saw Rollo Martins first I made this note on him for my security police files: In normal circumstances a cheerful fool. Drinks too much and may cause a little trouble. Whenever a woman passes raises his eyes and makes some comment, but I get the impression that really he’d rather not be bothered. Has never really grown up and perhaps that accounts for the way he worshipped Lime. I wrote there that phrase in normal circumstances because I met him first at Harry Lime’s funeral. It was February, and the gravediggers had been forced to use electric drills to open the frozen ground in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. It was as if even nature were doing its best to reject Lime, but we got him in at last and laid the earth back on him like bricks. He was vaulted in, and Rollo Martins walked quickly away as though his long gangly legs wanted to break into a run, and the tears of a boy ran down his thirty-five-year-old cheeks. Rollo Martins believed in friendship, and that was why what happened later was a worse shock to him than it would have been to you or me (you because you would have put it down to an illusion and me because at once a rational explanation—however wrongly—would have come to my mind). If only he had come to tell me then, what a lot of trouble would have been saved.

If you are to understand this strange rather sad story you must have an impression at least of the background—the smashed dreary city of Vienna divided up in zones among the four powers; the Russian, the British, the American, the French zones, regions marked only by notice boards, and in the centre of the city, surrounded by the Ring with its heavy public buildings and its prancing statuary, the Inner Stadt under the control of all four powers. In this once fashionable Inner Stadt each power in turn, for a month at a time, takes, as we call it, the chair, and becomes responsible for security; at night, if you were fool enough to waste your Austrian schillings on a night club, you would be fairly certain to see the International Patrol at work—four military police, one from each power, communicating with each other, if they communicated at all, in the common language of their enemy. I never knew Vienna between the wars, and I am too young to remember the old Vienna with its Strauss music and its bogus easy charm; to me it is simply a city of undignified ruins which turned that February into great glaciers of snow and ice. The Danube was a grey flat muddy river a long way off across the second bezirk, the Russian zone, where the Prater lay smashed and desolate and full of weeds, only the Great Wheel revolving slowly over the foundations of merry-go-rounds like abandoned millstones, the rusting iron of smashed tanks which nobody had cleared away, the frost-nipped weeds where the snow was thin. I haven’t enough imagination to picture it as it had once been, any more than I can picture Sacher’s Hotel as other than a transit hotel for English officers or see the

Reviews for The Third Man

[jgcorrea-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Graham Greene ingeniously captures the prevailing atmosphere of disruption and chaos that Vienna, a once highly civilized city, experienced during the years that followed World War II. The upheaval is physical, social, economic, political, moral, spiritual. You name it. Vanquished Vienna, conquered by the Allies, was crippled by turmoil in every imaginable way, and we are given the opportunity to experience the cultural and moral conflict that may even survive to this day. The character of Holly Martins, an American who crashes into post-World War II Europe, is a victim of such serious cultural divide. Unlike the Europeans, Martins always has the option of fleeing from the chaos and returning to the United States. For that alone, he may be resented by the local Viennese.
Now, what about Anna? What does Anna know about the illegal activities of her lover, Harry Lime, which includes the sale of diluted penicillin to Vienna's hospitals? Corrupted penicillin is a glaring symbol of a totally corrupted Vienna. Even after the truth about Harry's conduct is clearly revealed to her, she still sticks by him to the bitter end. While we don't blame her for rejecting the romantic overtures of Martins, who is kinda schnook, what's with her anyway? She reminds us of those who never once caught a whiff of the burning flesh from the overworked crematoria of the concentration camps that blackened the air all around . T 3rd man is not only a thriller, but also a serious indicator of serious and grave political issues.

[atticusfinch1048 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Third Man was not originally supposed to be published in book form as it was a film treatment. What he had wanted to do was dissect morally the ambivalent world of crooks and the compromised with the setting being post second world war Vienna. Where since the Anschluss there were many very compromised people and some very questionable ethics and morals amongst the population.

Harry Line invites his long-time friends Rollo Martins a hack who creates trashy westerns for the mass reading public. When he arrives at his hotel in Vienna, he is informed that Harry Lime is dead. Martins begins to investigate what really happened to his oldest friend. He tries to raise it with the police and with the people who Lime had mixed with. He finds them all to be very questionable morally and with holding much of the truth. Which leads to Lime being chased through the sewers of Vienna, a famous scene in the film starring Orsen Wells.

In the preface to the book, Greene states that The Third Man was never intended to be more than the raw material for the film. He even noted the there are changes in the film that are not in the book, and he was an unwilling participant in those changes. Greene does state ‘The film in fact, is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the story.’

IMO the film is fantastic and gets better with every year that has passed.

[crabbyabbe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.25/5. This spy classic (originally published as a novella by Graham Greene) is also a major film noir experience starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles. The suspense is crisply written a la Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. The reader follows Rollo Martin as he investigates the death of his best friend, Harry Lime, on the treacherous streets of WW2 Vienna, a city divided by war and corruption. Loved the book and movie!

[mykl8s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Post-WW2 Berlin, with drug lords, a hapless protagonist an a sort of love story. It sounds like a mess, but is a great read.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3½ stars. For once, I think that the movie is better - and reading the preface, so did Greene himself! I hadn't known that he wrote this specifically for Carol Reed to film after their successful collaboration with The Fallen Idol… This is a good suspense story but it lacks the tension which the film had and doesn't come up to the standard of This Gun For Hire or Brighton Rock.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rollo Martins, who writes Westerns under a pseudonym, arrives in post-war occupied Vienna to visit his old school chum, Harry Lime. Sadly, the larger-than-life Lime has just been killed in an accident, and Martins arrives just in time for the funeral. Discrepancies in the eyewitness stories soon have Martins suspecting that his old friend has been murdered, and the chief suspect is the third man who was present at the scene.

The novella is every bit as atmospheric as the film, with a strong sense of place and the undercurrent of rising Cold War tension. The audio version’s use of the film’s theme music is a nice touch. The narrative technique is similar to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, with a British police officer narrating in first person, repeating what he was told by Martins and filling in some details from his own experience. I would be hard-pressed to say which version I like best – the book or the film. They’re both excellent.

[sriddell_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book follows an American in Vienna shortly after WWII. He's invited to join a friend in Vienna, but arrives just in time for the friend's funeral following a car accident.

But as the story progresses, the car accident seems more and more suspect. There appears to be some foul play at work.

Lots of twists and turns and double crossings. Great story.

[quondame · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written before the script of the movie because the movie was in the works to provide character, mood and detail to draw from. It has peculiar framing techniques and one can almost hear narration. Anna and Frau Koch are pretty much ciphers as was period practice, though Anna, if not give character, is given interestingly expressed values.

[belana-990668 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I watched the film decades ago, so I remembered roughly what it was about.
When I got hold of a cheap copy of the audio book, I thought it was a great chance to actually get to know the original story.
Although my memory of the film is hazy at beast, my impression was, that it is a good adaptation.

I really enjoyed the book. Martin Jarvis' narration was perfect, and I didn't even mind that the audio was interspersed with the Harry Lime Theme which is so well known from the film. In fact, I actually enjoyed it.
If you don't know the story, go ahead and listen to it, then go on and watch the film if you can get a copy.

[febeyer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Using postwar Vienna divided between the English, Americans, French and Russians as the setting was genius. The faked death of Harry Lime - the seller of black market penicillin - and his subsequent escaping through the sewer into the Russian zone were wonderful plot devices.

I got a bit mixed up about all the dodgy characters and who knew what about Harry's fake death. Also the British policeman relating what Rollo Martins, the protagonist, was up to reminded me of Conrad's Lord Jim - the slightly detached narrator telling us what we could have got from the author through the protagonist much less confusingly. Mind you this was written for film and Greene knew what he was doing. Keen to watch film again after reading. Also wanted to read this before attempting the new biography of Greene "Russian Roulette" by Richard Greene - no relation.

[paperdolllady · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The narrator, Martin Jarvis, is wonderful in his delivery of this well-crafted noir classic. This audiobook received a R.F.W. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award, and his voice brings the story and characters to life .

[browner56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Graham Greene was a prolific writer whose best work has stood the test of time. He liked to divide his fiction between novels with serious themes (The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory, The Quiet American) and lighter fare that he labeled as “entertainments” (Travels With My Aunt, Our Man In Havana). Whatever the form, I have always found his writing to be compelling and frequently brilliant.

As one of his entertainments, the novella The Third Man has an interesting history. Greene wrote the story as the preliminary treatment of a screenplay for a film of the same name, although the book did not actually appear in print until after the movie came out. In fact, Greene himself thought that film version of the story (for which he also received a co-screenwriter credit) was much better than the novella. Regardless, it still works as a stand-alone book and entertaining it definitely is.

The story is set in a post-World War II Vienna that is split into four zones by occupying forces. There is a thriving black-market economy to fill the gaps for shortages in goods ranging from food to tires to medicine. Rollo Martins has come to town at the request of his life-long friend Harry Lime, but arrives just in time for a funeral. Lime, it seems, was the victim of a random car accident, although Martins refuses to accept the situation at face value and pursues the truth at whatever the personal cost happens to be. He soon learns the truth—which involves an unnamed third man who witnessed the apparent accident—which changes everything.

While it does not rank among the best of the author’s considerable catalog of work, The Third Man is nevertheless an atmospheric and highly satisfying reading experience. Greene was equally adept at writing both serious novels as well as thrillers and this novella should be included near the top of the latter category. It is also much shorter in length than most of the author’s other work, which makes it a brief commitment for which the reader will be well rewarded.

[addunn3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In post-WWII Vienna the allies have a quirky hold on the city.

[forsanolim · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Rollo Martins arrives in Vienna shortly after the end of World War II, when the city is divided into four occupation zones. He has come to take up his old friend Harry Lime's offer of a job, but he arrives instead just in time to attend Lime's funeral. Martins is told that Lime's death was an accidental car crash, but Martins soon decides that this story seems suspect and begins to investigate further.

I have a bit of a history with this story. I speak fluent German and studied abroad in college in Vienna, where I absolutely fell in love with the city and have wonderful memories associated with it. While on our trip, the professors organizing the study abroad took us to (I believe, if memory/Google serves me correctly) the Burg Kino to watch the film version of The Third Man, after which we went on a tour of the Vienna sewer system. This is just to say that, going into this book, I knew both the story and the city in which it's set decently well, and my view of the book's merits (as such) is probably not the most objective one.

Greene's preface states that "The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen." To be completely honest, I do think that this story is better seen than read. The edition of the book that I read was an updated ebook celebrating the release of a restored version of the film, and it was really interesting in that it had short video clips from the movie interspersed with the text, as well as the entire screenplay as an appendix. The clips were great for evoking the mood of the film, but in all honesty, the writing itself felt pretty sparse, and I found this book a bit less suspenseful/dramatic than how I remember the film. I'm glad I read it, as it was fun to return to this world and this city, but I think this might be a rare occasion where I'd recommend the film over the book (or at least definitely in addition to the book).

[lizzysiddal · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An entertainment from Greene does what it says “on the tin”. Entertain! A solid 3.5 stars.

[larryking1-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

  The Third Man in my estimation is one of the greatest films in cinematic history; it was a role that the usually over-rated Orson Welles was born to play. And, because the author of its screenplay, Graham Greene is one of my 'greats,' it stands to reason that I would get around to reading this novella. I will not go into its plot except to note that Greene's signature motif, the betrayal of faith again looms large. What needs mentioning is that this novel should never have been written! Greene was assigned to write its screenplay, and to give his scenario a measure of depth, he wrote a precis of sorts, a back story, to give him a means to infuse his characters with layers of complexity. When the movie became both a hit and a classic, his background material was fleshed into this exceptional novel. One oddity: one line, not in the book, by Wells' Harry Lime, "You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock," was an add-lib! Also, one last note, that will NOT be a spoiler, is that the book and the film's endings are completely different: one is a 'happy' ending and the other is one of complete and total devestation! I know the ending that I like! Will you?   

[br77rino · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great little detective story set in Vienna during its sharing by the four Allied forces: America, Britain, France and Russia. In the preface Greene says the movie is better, but I disagree. Well worthwhile.

[soraxtm-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not really a novel per se according to him. Not as meaty as The power and the Glory or Our Man In Havana.

[crazymamie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was great on audio, narrated by Martin Jarvis. I have the special Kindle edition that has clips and stills from the film inserted into the text, and I followed along with that. When I finished up, I watched the film again, and it was full of fabulous. I had not realized that Greene was asked to write a screenplay specifically set in post WWII Vienna. He said he needed to write a novella first in order to flesh out the characters, so that is what he did. When they filmed it, they changed some major things, but Greene was a part of all the discussion. He and the director disagreed on the ending, so the book has a completely different ending than the film. When Greene saw the finished film, he said that the director was right, and that the film has the stronger ending.

[robert3167 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This must be a first - the film was better than the book.

Written as a basis for a screen play it lacks depth. Green explains the reason for the book in the preface.
"The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen."
"To me it is almost impossible to write a film play without first writing a story. Even a film depends on more than plot, on a certain measure of characterization, on mood and atmosphere; and these seem to me almost impossible to capture for the first time in the dull shorthand of a script. One can reproduce an effect caught in another medium, but one cannot make the first act of creation in script form. One must have the sense of more material than one needs to draw on. The Third Man, therefore, though never intended for publication, had to start as a story before those apparently interminable transformations from one treatment to another."

I had no empathy for any of the characters.
It did however make me want to view the film again.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My second TBR Takedown book was a goodie. Graham Greene's The Third Man which he wrote for a screen play. I had the kindle version which included photo's, copies of writer's notes for the film and video segments of the film.

It starts off in February, in Vienna. I didn't realize that Vienna was divided into sections for English, American, French and Russian. It is a postwar, crime story. Harry Lime is dead and Rollo Martin, Western story writer, has come to Vienna to see his friend in time to attend the funeral.

Graham Greene tells us in the beginning of the story that the movie is better, that he wrote the story to help guide him in helping with the film production. The film was produced by Carol Reed. It stars Joseph Cotten, Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. The atmospheric use of black-and-white expressionist cinematography by Robert Krasker, with harsh lighting and distorted "Dutch angle" camera technique, is a major feature of The Third Man. Combined with the iconic theme music, seedy locations and acclaimed performances from the cast, the style evokes the atmosphere of an exhausted, cynical, post-war Vienna at the start of the Cold War. (Very apt description by Wikipedia).

Some points from the book. The main character besides Harry Lime the dead guy is Rollo Martin. Rollo is impetuous and Martin is thoughtful so Rollo Martin is a some of each. Martin has learned that he shouldn't mix his drinks (Rollo tends to have several women on the string) and Martin has decided that he shouldn't mix his drinks anymore. Other parts that I come to expect include the occasional Catholic reference.

Achievements: Guardian 1000 (Crime), 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006 Edition),
Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time - UK Crime Writers' Association (72). The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time Mystery Writers of America (48).

It was a quick read. Rating is a bit off as the film has corrupted my impression of the book. 4.2

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rollo Martins has just arrived in post-war Vienna in time to learn that the friend who invited him, Harry Lime, has been killed in an accident and his funeral is that afternoon. Through his grief, Martins recognizes that there are an unusual number of strangers offering him money, a bed and help getting back home, but not a lot of believable information about the day Harry died. All these things make novelist Martins suspicious that Harry's death wasn't an accident.

A slim book, this noir story of espionage was written by Greene in order to give him a feel for his characters before writing the script for the movie of the same name. There are some changes between the two, but if you enjoyed the movie (which is why I bought this book), you'll enjoy reading what's going on inside Martins head as he slinks around looking for a killer.

[iambookish-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had never read anything by Mr. Greene before, but a request from a blogger I follow to honor his Grandmother with a reading of her favorite author had me picking this title up. I'm so glad I did because Greene is a spectacular author, and with his dozens of writings I will be able to read something by him for many years to come!

[mbmackay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The classic noir story. So short (<70 pages) but cool, very cool.
Read Apr 2006

[ameise1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the reading very much. I saw the film years ago and in 2011 I had a 'Third Man' tour in Vienna where I saw the places where the story was playing. On this tour I learned also how Vienna was devided for the Allies and how this worked. This was for the content of the book very informative.
It's a fast-paced and short reading and shows how in the aftermath of WWII people were creative to make money even though others had to die for it.

[quickpint · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading this after a very long break from Graham Greene made me wonder if the author has been terribly overrated. I'd be curious to revist his greatest works now. This is short and diverting, but continues to reach for some wider literary awareness, and fails. This only dissipates the tension and atmosphere of what could be a very tight, claustrophobic book (like I remember Brighton Rock being). I wonder if Greene was executing someone else's idea with this novella? EDIT TO ADD: I have just discovered that Greene claimed he never intended this novella to be read by the public and it was to serve as a treatment for the screenplay only. This exuses a lot, but it makes it even more puzzling in a way - why all these lazy literary riffs on the difference between high/low culture? The bit where Western-writer Rollo Martin is continually mistaken for a literary author, for example? I dunno. Perhaps in essence this is halfway to Coen Brothers material, and I like them a lot. I dunno, I remain a bit disappointed by what The Third Man could have been.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Written after the screenplay, this short novel definitely conveys the feel of the movie. A good book, a great movie.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Het klassieke moordverhaal, in het door de geallieerden bezette Wenen. Beklijvend vooral door de sfeerschepping en de spanningsopbouw. 

[grheault_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Post-war Vienna, intrigue, military policing by the Allies (Russia, France, UK, and USA), black markets, and skanky characters. Harry's called his friend to visit, but shows up dead just as said friend arrives in Vienna. But none of it makes sense, and said friend spends the rest of the story being amateur detective. Odd structure, the narrator is the professional detective interviewing/narrating the amateur (Rollo Martins).

[wassilissa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wien kurz nach dem 2. Weltkrieg. Noch ist die Stadt zerstört und von Besatzungsmächten geteilt. Der Schriftsteller Rollo Martins besucht seinen Freund Harry Lime in Wien, doch er schafft es nur noch zu seiner Beerdingung. Harry wurde von einem Auto überfahren.
Da Rollo Martins den Toten als einen alten Schulfreund sehr geliebt hatte, kann er die Sache nicht einfach auf sich beruhen lassen. Er forscht ein bisschen nach und schnell kommt ihm der Verdacht, dass es sich um Mord gehandelt hat.
Wie nun Martins bei seinen Nachforschungen immer mehr feststellt, dass sein geliebter Freund kein armes Opfer, sondern oft auch ein Täter war, wie er immer desillusionierter durch das zerstörte und kalte Wien zieht, das sind grandiose Szenen, deren Wucht man auch ohne Film bemerkt.
Ich habe den Film nicht gesehen, obwohl ich einige Szenen (etwa die Kuckucksuhrrede), Bilder (etwa die Kanalisation) und natürlich die brilliante Musik kenne und mir gestern nach der Lektüre auch im Internet noch einiges dazu angeschaut habe. Ich finde es daher schade, das Graham Greene im Vorwort schon so viel verrät. Manches war für mich nicht mehr spannend. Das Vorwort sollte man besser als Nachwort lesen. Hier schildert der Autor, wie es eigentlich zu der Erzählung kam, die von vorneherein für die Verfilmung geschrieben wurde.