Rating: 
Summary: Oddly Compelling
Review: A dark, strange, yet wildly interesting book I found myself fascinated with, it's dark comedic words slowly meandering down a peculiar path that left me somewhat puzzled until the end. While not a mystery in the true sense of the word, the story remains enigmatic enough to keep you guessing what's happening on the pages before you. I much enjoyed reading this book.
The narrative could be a bit morbid for some, which is understandable. I won't go into the details of the book, other than to say it's an adventure relating to one man's search for a box of money resulting from the murder of a rich man who lived nearby. I should caveat this by saying it is neither a murder mystery, nor a mainstream story of any kind. Randomly, bicycles play a big part in the story.
I find the oddity of this book strangely compelling. Often, when I run across a story that is arcane or elusive, I toss it aside, proclaiming that the point of any book is to portray ideas, not confuse the narrative. For whatever reason, I don't think this book, which can certainly be called arcane and elusive, falls into that trap. It strings you along, maintaining your interest in what waits at the end of the story.
There's not much more to say about this book. I don't know what kind of reader will like this nor who will hate it. It's difficult to draw a parallel to any other book I have read. Perhaps a darkly comedic Confederacy of Dunces, but that might be a bit of a stretch. Certainly nothing mainstream which requires a happy ending, where the dragon is slain by the prince and the village lives happily ever after.
Strange, but I really enjoyed it. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman'
Review: A fantastic novel written by one of Ireland's most unrecognised great authors. Written in a surrealistic style, O'Brien is ahead of his time in this work which comments amusingly upon both life and the afterlife. O'Brien mixes absurdism with his mastery of syntax and razor sharp wit to produce a thoroughly enjoyable book, which guarantees to keep you both laughing, and guessing. If you enjoy absurdism, surrealism, or obscure yet fantastic Irish literature I highly recommend this novel as an introduction to O'Brien. You will most certainly move on to his more advanced masterpieces such as 'At Swim Two Birds'.
Rating: 
Summary: Kafka with a sense of humor?
Review: A murder mystery, but not a whodunit. Frightening yet hilarious. I won't get into the plot here; that's covered nicely in other reviews. But Flann O'Brien is a master plotster and king of minutia. At one point he describes an object so infinitesimal it could never be seen. He describes its smallness with such vivid clarity that by the time he's done, it vanishes before your eyes. There is quite a bit of paranoia here, and a nightmarish quality that really does have parallels with Kafka, but don't wonder whether O'Brien means to be funny; he does. This book will leave you with this weird hollow feeling in your bones for a long time to come. And if you like O'Brien's brand of humor, take a look at "Out of Focus" by Alf MacLochlainn.
Rating:
Summary: truly surreal and mind-warping
Review: a must-read for anyone who believes that surrealism is an important mode of communication. this is a cornerstone surrealist work. read it, and also read "at swim-two-birds" -- another, slightly more humorous and easier-to-identify-with book.
Rating:
Summary: Third Policeman
Review: A squashed fly on a cracked ceiling, or Gogarty's outhouse on a detailed map,the preferred candy between Dolly Mixture or Carnival Assortment and what exactly is the sound of a shovel on an old mans skull?
This novel, which O'Brien refused to publish for 20 years, poses these questions, with an unrivalled blend of humour and the macabre.
O'Brien's plot twists around murder, robbery, greed and other base human actions, but still manages to introduce brilliant comic invention such as DeSelby's theory of mirrors. This is a highly readable, must read title
Rating:
Summary: Belter
Review: Any book involving atomic theories, bicycles, council conspiricies and very small boxes has got to be worth a look. Confusing, hilarious and, despite appearances to the contrary, a plot. Published posthumously, I think - O'Brien was clearly fond of it as large portions appear in The Dalkey Archive. But if you've read that, don't let it put you off, The Third Policeman is better. Damn fine read, heartily recommended (reviewers are required to say this by law I believe).
Rating:
Summary: A poet's impression of quantum mechanics
Review: At long last I had the opportunity to reread this book that had entertained me many years ago. I cannot help but notice the odd parallels between the strange ideas presented in the novel and the whacky world of sub-atomic physics in which much sense of reality goes contrary to one's impressions of the "ordinary" world. Essential reading for physicists, artists, and anyone who just wants a good read. I harbor the fond hope that Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) will make the movie!
Rating:
Summary: A Fierce Pancake
Review: Cartesian duality takes a bicycle ride. My favorite book ever. PS Irish 1980s avant-rock band Stump released an album called "A Fierce Pancake," and the band was pictured on the inside sleeve as bicycle-riding coppers!
Rating: 
Summary: A Mystical Experience in the County Offaly
Review: Critics of this work have missed the essentially religious nature of the anti-hero's pilgrimage through a bleak and featureless townland, familiar to all those who have made a trip into the hinterlands of County Offaly. There in that noble county where TDs travel on bicycle (rise up Oliver J. and be among us once more, or doth that Lion sleep forever) and where bogmen go along in packs, the spirit can find much purgatory.
Rating:
Summary: So good it makes me giggle
Review: First, a few quibbles. Strictly speaking, this book is not "surrealist," as a few reviewers aver. Nor is it a mystery, nor science fiction, probably. The closest thing to it I have read is Stanislaw Lem, though the feeling is closer to Swift. O'Brien spins an incredibly imaginative, voluble, funny, inventive yarn. Our nameless protagonist meets policemen, visits eternity, and develops a relationship with a bicycle. His soul, Joe, enjoys proclaiming that he (the protagonist) is "Signor Bari, the eminent one-legged tenor!" The protagonist is a literally amoral person. In other words, he is not troubled by any dilemmas other than how best to preserve his own hide (and possibly to publish his work on bogus savant de Selby.) His role in this book is not to simulate a real person, in other words. Like Gulliver, he observes O'Brien's world and in reacting to that world, acts as a proxy for the reader. But more on that below. Having committed a self-serving though impulsive murder, he begins to meet odd people and have odd conversations. He meets a curiously circumlocutory policeman, and after a mind-bending conversation, he begins to talk in similarly loopy style, in a hilarious attempt to fit in: "Those chests... are so like one another that I do not believe they are there at all because that is a simpler thing to believe than the contrary." O'Brien displays amazing virtuosity with the English language, especially considering it is his second language (his first is Irish.) And yet his characters talk in a (to my untravelled ear) a peculiarly, and hilariously, Irish way: "Only myself has the secret of the thing and the intimate way of it, the confidential knack of circumventing it." But there are also passages of limpid beauty But what is he making fun of? Self-obsessed scholars and their exegetists, undoubtedly. But there are also themes of punishment and guilt, both felt and adjudicated. After a few hours of consideration, I might hazard that O'Brien is making fun of, and cherishing, greed, selfishness and the desperate desire to avoid justice. When visiting eternity the protagonist discovers he can have literally anything, so he requests and receives bricks of gold, jewels, small but frightful weapons, etc.; he generally displays venality and defensiveness. When it turns out he cannot bring any of it with him, he bursts into tears. When a policeman sympathetically offers him a piece of candy, he cries even harder. So although the protagonist is amoral, the book is basically a morality play. In fact it turns out that the entire book is a long description of the hapless protagonist's comeuppance. O'Brien's Catholic upbringing shows through, I suppose. Humanity's lot is justly a poor one, yet one cannot blame them for longing for better. Perhaps it is just best to have a sad whiskey.
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