This book contains 2 stories: The first is about a Brit who is invited to post-war Vienna by a friend, only to discover that said friend is dead and may have been involved in a rather nasty racket. The Third Man is unlike other Greene books. As Greene himself points out in the preface, 'it was never written to be read but only to be seen', meaning that while it's not exactly a film script, The Third Man was written to be turned into one, and it shows - the story is light on characterisation and heavy on descriptions of actions and situations.
The second, much shorter story in the book, 'The Fallen Idol', this is a tragedy about an innocent child who gets caught up in the nasty games adults play and ends up accidentally handing his best friend over to the police. It has great characters, some menace, several 'Oh, no!' moments and an abrupt but effective ending.
Both stories are beautifully written with not a word wasted, and both are very bleak in different ways
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