The This week we welcome our first real anti-hero to the podcast.

Sure, Sam Spade and Philip Marlow were looking for a buck as much as the next guy,

but they had moral codes that governed their conduct with

clients and the cops. Fortunately, for readers, movie fans and radio audiences, Harry

Lyme had no such scruples, and even better, he was played by the

incomparable Orson Wells.

Before we go on, let me give a quick spoiler alert.

This introduction and the radio episode will hear today give away the ending of the film The Third Man.

If you haven't seen the movie, and you really should, it's brilliant, go check it out and then come back and listen to the episode.

Harry Limes sprang from the mind of writer Graham Green in the screenplay for the 1949 film The Third Man.

The story centered on Rolo Martins, a writer of Pulp Novel Westerns, who comes to post-war Vienna in response to a job offer from his old friend Harry Lyme.

It isn't long before Martins is told that Lyme is dead,

but Martin sets off to investigate the suspicious story of Lyme's demise.

Along the way, he falls for Lyme's girlfriend. He learns that his friend was involved in some pretty

shady business, and he discovers that Harry Lyme isn't dead at all.

Once Martins learns the extent of Lyme's enterprise, which involves selling diluted

penicillin to patients in desperate need of the drug.

Not even Lyme's charm and Martin's affection for his old friend can keep him from doing the right thing.

Martin's helps the British Army police lay a trap for Lyme and it all ends with a chase through the Vienna sewers where Harry Lyme finally meets his end.

Graham Green prepared for the screenplay by writing the story first as a novella and that

novella was published following the release of the film.

There was some changes from Green's original idea when the story hit the screen. The protagonist was renamed Holly Martins rather

...