A 1001 Midnights Review: GRAHAM GREENE – The Third Man.

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Marcia Muller GRAHAM GREENE – The Third Man. Viking, US, hardcover, 1950. Reprinted many times. Rollo Martins, a somewhat drunken writer of westerns, has come to Vienna at the request of his old school friend, Harry Lime. Lime has suggested he might write a piece on the postwar international refugee problem and pay his way to the divided city. But when Martins arrives, Lime is dead, having been run over by a car in front of his building, and Martins is barely in time for his funeral. There he meets Colonel Calloway of the British occupational police force; Calloway is interested in Lime, and in Martins’ association with him. Although he has little money, Martins manages to stay on in Vienna by cadging funds from a variety of people who seem extraordinarily concerned with his welfare. And soon questions about Harry Lime begin to plague him: Who was his friend, really? A harmless adult version of the boy Martins knew at school — a young rogue who played all…