Graham Greene

I'm in a very weird reading mood, "genre-wise." I'm unsure whether to read the cosmic horror of Marc Laidlaw's The 37th Mandala or--more to the point of this discussion group--Graham Greene's The Human Factor.

The latter is the only Greene novel I own, the other titles I have being his screenplay for The Third Man and the Complete Short Stories.

Has anyone read The Human Factor? Or any of his other "entertainments" like The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana*, or the earlier novels? Which of his short stories also deal with espionage?

* The closest I've come to this one is John Le Carre's The Tailor of Panama.

Indecision often generating a snowball effect, I'm no longer stuck between two choices, as a third candidate for my next read just came up: The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, my copy of which I referred to in this thread.

I could recommend ORIENT EXPRESS by Greene, first pub. 1932, reissued by Penguin in 2004--a kind of thriller and psychogical mystery, with spy undertones, in the Eric Ambler mode. Phil McCoy

Thanks for the recommendation, mcoy. I've long been curious about Orient Express, given my fascination with trains in general and that one in particular.

It's probably too late for this to be helpful, but I wouldn't really recommend The Human Factor. It's pretty dull and definitely not one of Greene's best.

I loved The Human Factor, wunderkind, so I guess I'm off to a good start. Which of his spy thrillers do you recommend?