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Rollo Martins, an author of cowboy novels, arrives in Vienna to visit an old school friend, Harry Lime, only to find that he has arrived on the day of Lime's funeral. Investigating Lime's death, Martins learns that a neighbor saw the traffic accident that killed Lime and observed three men carrying Lime's body from the scene. Only two of those men have been identified--the third man has vanished.
As Martins investigates Lime's death, the novel is by turns exciting and darkly humorous, intensely visual in its descriptions and action, but lacking the characterization and thematic focus which one associates with most of Greene's work. The novella is full of wit and dark theatrics, and includes everything from a chase through the sewers to a love story.
The Fallen Idol, sometimes known as "The Basement Room," is, by contrast, a psychological, rather than plot-based story. Nine-year-old Philip, who idolizes the family's butler Baines, since his parents pay little attention to him, is left with Baines and his wife while the parents go on vacation. Baines is having an affair, and Philip innocently discloses this to his wife.
The resulting confrontation results in an accident in which the wife ends up dead, and Philip, panicked, runs out, only to be picked up by a policeman, to whom another naive remark conveys the idea that Baines has murdered her. Irony and a delightfully drawn child's point of view (unusual for Greene) make The Fallen Idol one of Greene's more interesting and twisted stories.
Both The Third Man and The Fallen Idol led to film collaborations between Greene and director Carol Reed--The Fallen Idol in 1948, and Reed's more famous film of The Third Man in 1949. Dark humor, elaborate ironies, and surprising twists characterize both stories and show Greene to be a master manipulator of perceptions. Mary Whipple
Inevitably, the book is virtually a screenplay and other reviewers have covered the story excellently.
For interest, Martins and Lime are English in the book, Martins pretty much 'executes' Lime in the sewer and he also get's the girl. I also assume that Lime was the 'Third Man' at the scene of his own mock accidental death - unless someone knows differently.
When younger I always thought the sewer scene and the music were most memorable but on reading the novel the significance of Lime's prescient speech on the Ferris Wheel comes to the fore.
Only 98 pages, and hence sold with 'The Fallen Idol', the Third Man is a stunning, short, sharp, smack in the face of a read.
This is a book I enjoy a lot, thought it's very dificult to read it with an imagination as free as with other books, because the images and sounds from the film came continuosly over me.
The only little flaw it has, for my taste, anyway, are some details of the style, as when the narrator writes directly to the reader commenting one situation of the story. For all the rest a wonderful short story (well, two really, including The Fallen Idol)
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