Play Book Tag discussion

The Third Man by Graham Greene- 4* - My Review

Rollo Martins arrives in post-WWII Vienna at a time when it is occupied by the four Allied forces. He finds out that his friend, Harry Lime, has been killed in an accident and the funeral is about to take place. Martins tries to discover what happened to Harry but is not obtaining reliable information. He becomes suspicious that Harry may have been murdered.

Greene created this work as a precursor to writing the screenplay for the film. It is short, fast-paced, and easily spurred my curiosity. I am impressed by the amount of ground covered in a sparely written book. The main characters and settings are easy to picture. I especially enjoyed the humorous scene where Martins, a writer of westerns under a pseudonym, is mistaken for an author with a similar name. I do not read many mysteries, but this is one of the better ones. It proves a plot does not to be convoluted to be effective. Now I need to re-watch the film.