The Third Man (Graham Greene)

The Third Man
Graham Greene
Penguin Books
Fiction, Mystery
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Before war came calling, Vienna was a beautiful and cultured city, but now it's a shadow of its former self, shattered by bombings and controlled by a mishmash of nations with increasingly fractious relations. It's the sort of place where crime is almost a way of life... and an all-too-common cause of death.
Rollo Martins, writer of pulp Westerns under a pen name, comes to Vienna hoping to meet his old school friend Harry Lime - and barely learns of the man's death in time to make it to the funeral. When a local cop tells him that Lime was suspected of racketeering, Martins refuses believe it. He knew Harry like he knew few people; sure, the man was forever coming up with clever schemes, but criminal activity - especially on the level the authorities are implying - was surely a step too far. But as Martins starts looking for evidence to clear his late friend's name, he becomes convinced that the car crash that ended Lime's life was no accident. And if the police are too busy suspecting the man of dark deeds to investigate, then it's up to Rollo Martins to find the truth... and that's the sort of thing that can get an outsider killed in a city like Vienna.

REVIEW: A classic noir mystery (and film; apparently, Greene wrote the book with the intent of adapting it into the screenplay, which he did, even though the book itself wasn't released until 1950 and the movie came out in 1949), The Third Man starts with a simple enough setup and develops into a story of intrigue permeated by gray morality and characters with inherently flawed souls.
Rollo Martins starts out convinced of one simple truth, that he knows his friend better than even the local authorities and they've got the wrong idea about everything. The lead detective is wrong, but not, unfortunately, in the way Martins hopes. Martins himself is not quite the man he might have hoped to be, driven home by a case of mistaken identity that plays into the story later on, but he just can't bring himself to believe that the stories of Lime's shady dealings are true. Even when it becomes clear that not only was he murdered but that he was, indeed, mixed up in something unsavory, Martins keeps telling himself that there must be someone else behind it all, someone pulling his friend's strings and making him a victim instead of a perpetrator. Thus he begins to dig what may well be his own grave, encountering numerous friends and acquaintances of the late Lime, few of whom have anything like clean hands. Even Lime's girlfriend, Anna Schmidt, an actress living in town under false papers, isn't an innocent heart; she knew full well what the man was capable of, but still loved him. After all, who in a city as broken and traumatized as Vienna can possibly be a pure soul? Despite everything he learns, Martins just can't stop digging, trying to find an angel under mountains of corruption and sin, but there are no angels in Vienna, just flawed humans and human monsters, with a blurred line between the two.
The plot ratchets up nicely with each new revelation and each fresh blow to Martins's rosy memory of the Lime he knew, adding more bodies to the count and more threats to the amateur detective. Outside of a noir plot, the revelation at the end might feel a bit contrived, as might the climax, but it works in the setting and with the characters and mood. Naturally, there's some aging, and there's a bit at the very end that doesn't quite ring true, but overall it holds up decently. (And I really should get around to seeing the movie one of these days...)

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