Doyle makes the main suspect a beggar who many people look down on, adding more to the assumption that he is the murderer of Neville St Clair.
“ In fact, in the whole of that floor there was no one to be found, save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, it seems, made his home there.”
Doyle describes Hugh Boone, the beggar, as “ the creature” and uses such descriptions as “greasy” “disfigured horrible scar” and “a bull dog chin” to build up a mental image in our heads of a rather revolting man, atypical ‘baddie’ of a detective story.
Graham Greene sets “The Third Man” in post-war Vienna, during which Austria is still occupied territory and is spilt into four zones. The breakdown in communication between the zones has resulted in poor law and order in the city. Greene mentions early on that Harry is a racketeer
“ A very long spell’ (in prison)’if it hadn’t been for the accident.”
And
“He was about the worst racketeer who ever made a dirty living in this city”.
We are told what he does for a living but not how he does it until further into the book. During the time that we find out what his profession is, to what he sells the story of Harry’s death change with each person Martin questions. This makes us realise quite soon that Harry did not die in an accident but under suspicious circumstances.
Graham Greene uses a police officer to narrate the story. The figure of authority makes us belive what he is telling us and our natural response is not to doubt him. Greene throughout the story never mentions Martins current status and refers to him in the past “ he always tried” instead of “he always tries” for example, this makes us wonder if Martins is still alive.
Rollo Martins protested lime’s innocence until he found concrete evidence to prove otherwise. We feel sorry for him and want to belive Lime’s innocence to, this leads us further away from the truth. The romance between Martins and Anna is a side plot put in to add another aspect to the detective story, but also to distract our attention away from the reality, that Harry faked his own death leaving a devoted friend and his lover behind in order to escape police capture. However with Anna’s genuine grief over Harry’s ‘death’ is the same as Rollo protesting Harry’s innocence, we want to belive them.
Conan Doyle uses Doctor Watson as the narrator, as he has in the other Sherlock homes stories. In “The Man with the Twisted Lip” Watson joins Homes after collecting a man from an opium den, setting the scene immediately in a sinister atmosphere. The problem is told to the reader at the same time as Watson. This means there is a character in the story that we can identify with, as they know just as much as we do. The mysteries leaves us with no explanation as to how a man can be seen in a room then appear to have vanished. Because we, the reader, have no idea of how the disappearance happened, we are given an explanation that, as we have no other theory, chooses to accept.
Graham Greene uses the crimes of Harry Lime to distract us from any real clues that there are. There are two men at the funeral, one of which forgets to drop a wreath onto the coffin- a sign of grief of or knowing that the body being buried is not of Harry Lime. Kurtz is
Introduced as a suspicious character,
“There must be something phoney about a man who won’t take baldness gracefully”
This takes suspicion away from the fake death of Harry’s and puts it on those who were with him when he ‘died’.
Over all both writers, use our expectations of a ‘typical’ detective story against us. They ‘pull the wool over our eyes’ in what are enjoyable story is to read.
