Rating: 
Summary: A "Must Read" for cyclists
Review: This is one of the funniest books anybody with a right-minded sense of humour will pick up. For cyclists, it is required reading along with a good cycle repair manual. In other words, until you've read this book you cannot properly understand the bicycle.
Rating:
Summary: Strange and Blackly Funny
Review: This is one of the strangest novels I have ever read. It was written in about 1940, but not published until 1967, a year or two after the author`s death. O`Brien is a pseudonym for the Irish writer Brian O`Nolan, who was also a celebrated newspaper columnist using the name Myles na gCopaleen, the latter name apparently Gaelic. O`Brien`s other masterpiece is At Swim-Two-Birds, which was published in 1939. His "Myles" columns is also well-regarded, and such novels as The Poor Mouth and The Hard Life are well worth reading. The Third Policeman is quite funny, quite absurd, and, at bottom, very disturbing. The narrator is a very unpleasant man, who announces in the first sentence "Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade;" not only is he a murderer, but a very lazy man who ruins his family farm, and spends his life researching the works of a madman named De Selby, who believes that, among other things, darkness is an hallucination, the result of accretions of black air. The narrator relates his early life briefly, leading up to his association with another unsavory character, John Divney, who parasitically moves in with the narrator and helps squander his inheritance. Divney and the narrator plot to kill their neighbor, Phillip Mathers, to steal his money. After the murder they decide to leave the money for a while until the coast clears: however they distrust each other so much that they never leave each others company. Finally they go to Mathers`s house to fetch the strongbox with his money: then Divney sends the narrator ahead to the house alone, while he stands lookout, and things get very strange! The narrator meets Phillip Mathers, acquires a sort of soul which he calls "Joe", and sets out looking for three mysterious policemen. The first two are easily found, and the narrator discusses bicycles, boxes, and other unusual subjects with these policemen. Finally they decide to hang him (for bicycle theft, I think), but he is rescued by the league of one-legged men (the narrator himself has but one leg). He returns to Mathers` house where he encounters the third policemen, and eventually is reunited with John Divney. The above summary, obviously, does not represent the action or interest of the book at all. The book is full of off-the-wall philosophical speculations, some based on the mad works of De Selby, others original to the policeman (the latter including a theory about bicycles and their riders which has to be read to be appreciated, also a mysterious trip to an underground cavern where anything you can imagine can be created). There are a lot of footnotes discussing De Selby and the controversy surrounding his work: these make the book somewhat reminiscent of Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (also reminiscent in being the first-person narrative of an insane murderer). Wholly original, blackly funny, brilliantly written. A wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: bits of the book's atoms will get onto you...
Review: This is the funniest book I've read in a decade. First of all, it's the sombre yet academical tone of the narrator (the main character has no name for he has forgot his own name) --- who would have expected to find footnotes in a novel? Second, the weird things described in the novel and the way people argued make perfect logical sense although we all know it's all nonsense. Third, the creation of De Selby shows that Flann O'Brien is a story-telling genius, so much so that the first time I read this book I thought that De Selby actually existed!! And only thanks to my university library which boasts a big hoard of books, COPAC, and the British Library, I'm finally convinced that De Selby have never ever lived. Oh how I wish to find a book written by De Selby --- because it'd be great fun to read his books! BTW, there're even more De Selby in "The Dalkey Archive"!!! And don't read "The Poor Mouth" unless you're ready to read 100-odd pages about the boiled potato diet of an Irish family.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning.
Review: This is without a doubt the most funny and innovative book I've read in a long time. It was recommended to me by the former art critic for the NYTimes, and I can assure you it didn't disappoint. O'Brien's imagination and wit are simply breathtaking, and it's difficult to read this book in one sitting, just because there are so many unique and clever things to process. My favorite part involves the one-legged men, but anyone who doesn't immediately fall in love with veils, de Selby, and atomic theory and its relation to bicycling, does not have a sense of humor and should be avoided at all costs. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning.
Review: This is without a doubt the most funny and innovative book I've read in a long time. It was recommended to me by the former art critic for the NYTimes, and I can assure you it didn't disappoint. O'Brien's imagination and wit are simply breathtaking, and it's difficult to read this book in one sitting, just because there are so many unique and clever things to process. My favorite part involves the one-legged men, but anyone who doesn't immediately fall in love with veils, de Selby, and atomic theory and its relation to bicycling, does not have a sense of humor and should be avoided at all costs. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Wierd, absurd and irresistible
Review: This novel is a dream and in every dream you know everything should be wierd a little, impossible a little and true a little. And in every dream you fill you ought to do something and in every dream you can't. It's called frustration and this book is about the greatest frustation you can experience. In the end you should wake up and feel relieved, but last pages of Third policeman will put you back on the beginning of the text. You won't be alone, main character will be there with you. A gem!
Rating: 
Summary: Dark Humour
Review: This novel is about a hilarious and terrifying murder case. You feel at many times dislocated and trapped in a surreal comedy, but the underlying ideas of the story are quite serious. In a sense, the murder is over and solved in the first sentence. The rest of the novel is a contemplation of the psychological and metaphysical consequences of it. With all its comic character twists and impossibly ludicrous theories about the nature of reality, it conveys serious anxieties over the meaning of humanity. The protagonist waits for punishment, but, like Raskolnikov, is tortured more by the anticipation of the punishment than in the execution of it. However, the protagonist's fate isn't that of a remote prison, but a terrible cycle of unjustified loss and excruciating befuddlement. Unlike the homoerotic/spiritual companionship of Ishmael and Queequeg his strangely intimate relationship with John Divney is based on antagonism and suspicion. It is also oddly anonymous for someone who is supposed to be so close to him. His relationship with all the characters including his soul, Joe, is based on a delicate unknowingness. The closest relationship he has is with his favourite author de Selby who he admits to committing his crime for in order to publish his critical commentary on him. It is through the backward logic of this author that he is forced to live by in the aftermath of the murder. He finds himself reverting back to his knowledge of de Selby even though it becomes clear that this has no rational basis. You find yourself laughing, but not for long.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Novel I've read in a long time.
Review: This novel is an brillant satire. Unlike other writers, O'Brien does not satirize political or social conditions but reality itself along with philosophy. This novel is strange and often hilarious. Under the humor is, however, is a dark undercurrent. This book will not be like anything you've ever read before. Buy this and Kurt Vonnegutt and R. A. Lafferty.
Rating:
Summary: there will not be his like seen again
Review: underrated even among myles' hidden opus, a taught philosophical masterpiece, a tongue in cheek disquisition on metaphysics that proves the Irish the equal of the Ancient Greeks; and all done with one leg on the bar.
Rating:
Summary: The joy of our Flann
Review: Undoubtedly one of the finest books I have ever read, a sentiment echoed by the several people I distributed the book to after reading it myself. After a relatively straightforward opening chapter the plot just takes off, leaving you asking yourself what the hell is going on. The atomic theory, DeSelby, bicycles - it's hard to believe this book is a product of pre-war Ireland. And it ends well too. A book that you will want to tell your friends about in the pub. By the way, the Poor Mouth is great too, although it's aimed much more directly at an Irish audience.
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