The Heart of the Matter/Stamboul Train/A Burnt-out Case/The Third Man/The Quiet American/Loser Takes All/The Power & the Glory

The Third Man:

Broken postwar Vienna is translocated to a cold and barren winter in the heart of Greeneland in this short, pithy novella, a rare example of the book and the movie being equally great. I only knock a star off due to the occasional clumsiness of the first-person narrative device. Sometimes it confuses, and Greene frequently falls into the trap of allowing Calloway to provide far more detail than he could possibly know about situations he is relating secondhand. But even an imperfect Greene is better than most writers' best. He remains, for me, the master.