Lansdale remembered seeing the English novelist only once, in 1954, when Greene was sitting on the terrace of the colonial-era Continental Hotel, a favorite haunt of expatriates in Saigon, along with a large number of French officers who began to boo Lansdale when they saw him. Lansdale was with two of his friends, the husband-and-wife New York Times correspondents F. Tillman Durdin and Peggy Durdin. Peg stuck her tongue out at the crowd on the terrace and said, “But we love him,” and turned around and gave Lansdale “a big hug and kiss.” In an anecdote a bit too good to be true, Lansdale
...more
