The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien

Absurd times need absurd words, and Flann O'Brien, you really have some for us. For which we thank you.

The absurdity starts at the very beginning, with a horrifying confession from your narrator:

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; …

What?

What the what?

But you're not done, I can see — that first sentence isn't finished, left hanging with a cunning semicolon, and you're already moving off to tell us something else, to add absurd context:

… but first it is better to speak of friendship with John Divney because it was he who knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar.

And you want us to understand that your friend should share the blame for Mathers's death:

Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy and idle-minded. He was personally responsible for the whole idea in the first place.

You expect us to believe that, shifting the blame?

It was he who told me to bring my spade. He was the one who gave the orders on the occasion and also the explanations when they were called for.

What?

This is an extraordinary book.

We never know the name of the narrator. We know that he is accused of robbery and murder, but we never know his name. Extraordinary.

The narrator is an armchair academic, a dedicated scholar of the works of de Selby, a renowned scientist and philosopher who he discovers when he's sent to boarding school following his parents' death. de Selby's rich output fills the pages of The Third Policeman, and the book itself contains many numbered footnotes, references to de Selby's work. He shapes the whole of the narrator's life to the extent that he tells us early on, '… it was for de Selby I committed my first serious sin. It was for him I committed my greatest sin.' (pg. 9)

Though O'Brien's narrator works for years to complete the definitive critical text on de Selby's work, he has no money to publish it. Divney, who runs the family's farm and pub, already has a plan to murder and rob local man Mathers, and, realising this would give him the funds he needs, the two join forces to commit the crime. But Divney double-crosses him — he absconds with the box of money and buries it, not telling his friend where.

The narrator does not let Divney out of his sight, even sharing a bed with him —

… the situation was a queer one and neither of us liked it …
pg. 13

— until he tells him where the box of cash is hidden. Three years pass before Divney relents, saying it's under the floorboard in Mathers's old house. The narrator goes to find the box, but as he puts his hands on it, “something happened” (pg. 24).

To this point the story has been curious and quirky. From here on, though, the narrator enters an increasingly strange, surreal world.

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Old Mathers is in the room with him.

His face was terrifying but his eyes in the middle of it had a quality of chill and horror which made his other features look to me almost friendly.
pg. 25

Soon another joins too, the voice of the narrator's soul, who he calls Joe.

The narrator and his soul, Joe, try to find the money box, and Mathers recommends a trip to the police station. At the barracks, the duty officers, Sergeant Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen, speak in nonsense phrases and we find they are obsessed with bicycles. In one of the most brilliant phrases in literature, Sergeant Pluck offers his ‘atomic theory’ of bicycles:

The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles.
…
When a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
pg. 88–90

(This is presumably the reference William Fotheringham, the sports journalist, was using in his biography of the great Belgian cyclist, Eddy Merckx — Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike.)

The mysterious third policeman of the title, Fox, is reputedly all-powerful, and the narrator meets him later (pg. 189) in a secret police station in the walls of Mathers's house, and discovers he has Mathers's face.

The book is an utter delight — brilliant, and overflowing with wit and the most wonderful absurdity. Every paragraph is strange, every sentence brims with surreality, immensely fun and funny without leaning into jokes or one-liners.

It's a pastoral landscape, unmistakably Irish, yet closer to that contorted version of reality you find between wake and dream. The ending is simply marvellous, making the absurdity even more fun.

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The impact of The Third Policeman has been huge since its publication in 1967 (written 1939–40 by Brian O'Nolan under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien, but only published after the author's death).

In January 1997, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Patrick Magee reading an abridged version for the 'Late Story'. It's a brilliant reading, and wonderfully it's been put up on Soundcloud:

The nonsense poem, 'Ten Years in an Open Neck Shirt', by John Cooper Clarke, the Bard of Salford, includes the line, “what with the drink trade on its last legs and the land running fallow for the want of artificial manures,” in echo of Divney's explanation for their lack of money to fund the narrator's book (pg. 14).

And famously, the book featured in the TV show Lost in 2005, at the start of Season 2, in part to explain its mythology. Book sales in the following 3 weeks exceeded those of the previous 6 years.

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is one of my favourite books of all time, definitely in my 'top 5 books ever, currently' list.

Once, many years ago, a friend agreed to read it after I'd kept on about it. On finishing he said, ‘I don't know what I have just read, but I loved it!’

In strange and difficult times, we need absurdity. This book is exactly that.

So, do yourself a favour — go grab yourself a copy right now. You won't regret it.