The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman is a 1967 novel by Irish author Flann O'Brien. The darkly comic story, narrated by an unnamed scholar accused of robbery and murder, is set in a two-dimensional police station in rural Ireland. The Third Policeman is an absurdist meditation on the meaning of life and death and the nature of the human experience.

The narrator is an amateur academic and armchair expert in the works of a philosopher and scientist known as de Selby. The narrator discovered de Selby when he was sent off to boarding school as a child. De Selby's rich output of mind-bending work becomes a focus of the narrator's life.

One night, the narrator breaks his leg for reasons not entirely clear. Doctors, puzzlingly, remove the leg instead of setting it, and then switch it out for a wooden one. The narrator returns to his family home to convalesce. There he meets John Divney, the man charged with looking after the family's farm and pub.



For the next several years, the narrator delves even more deeply into de Selby's work. Divney, meanwhile, operates the family's businesses. When his thirtieth birthday rolls around, the narrator has completed work on what he thinks is the quintessential text on de Selby's work. Unfortunately, the author doesn't have the money to get the book published. In a conversation with Divney around this time, the narrator discovers that Divney is planning to rob and murder a local man named Mathers—which would give the narrator the funds to have his book published. The narrator and Divney join forces to commit the crime.

In the melee following the killing, Divney absconds with Mathers's box of cash. When he comes back, he refuses to tell the narrator where he has hidden the box. Determined to not let Divney out of his sight lest he runs off with the cash that belongs to both of them, the narrator goes everywhere with Divney—even going so far as to share his bed with him.

Three years pass in this manner, and the friendship of the narrator and Divney becomes strained as they spend all their time together. Finally, Divney relents. He tells the narrator that the cash box is hidden under the floor of Mathers's old house. As the narrator locates the box and reaches for it, all his senses are suddenly "bewildered," and the box disappears. Even more disturbing, in the room with him is the man he killed, Mathers, and the two have a strange and dreamlike conversation. However, during the course of the conversation, another voice speaks to the narrator. It is the voice of the narrator's soul, whom he names Joe.



The narrator tells Mathers that he needs to find the cash box, and Mathers recommends he go to the local police station because the authorities there have a good reputation. The narrator follows the advice, and on his way to the station, he meets another one-legged man, Martin Finucane, who threatens to kill him. However, upon discovering their mutual lack of limb, the narrator and Martin bond instead.

At the police station, the narrator meets two officers on duty, Sergeant Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen. The two officers speak in strange, nonsensical phrases, and they have a fascination with bicycles.

That is not the only thing off about this police station. There is all manner of unusual devices and contraptions stored there. One gathers sound and transforms it into light. Another is a huge underground compartment where time stops; the compartment issues a string of confusing numerical codes, much to the obsession and fixation of the two policemen. There is a box that you can reach into and pull out anything your heart desires. Most perplexingly to the narrator, there is a chest that opens to reveal smaller and smaller chests, with no end seemingly in sight.



A short time later, police discover Mathers's body in a ditch. Joe thinks it was Martin's doing, but the policemen arrest the narrator. The narrator tells Pluck that because he has no name, he cannot face criminal charges. Pluck takes another position: that because the narrator has no name, he is not really a person at all and can hang.

Pluck and MacCruiskeen lead the narrator to the gallows, but when the underground compartment starts emitting strange numerical readings, the officers abandon the hanging. They have spared the narrator for the moment, and the next day, he escapes his cell on a bicycle. Traveling through the countryside, he sees a light on in Mathers's house and feels compelled to stop. There he meets the third policeman, whose name is Fox and who works in a police station secreted within the wall of Mathers's house. Fox has the same face as Mathers. Fox tells the narrator that he caused the underground compartment to emit those unusual readings, so it is he, Fox, who is responsible for saving the narrator's life. He also tells the narrator that he retrieved Mathers's cash box and sent it to the narrator's house. To the narrator's surprise, the box does not contain cash, but omnium—the fundamental energy of the universe—which can turn into anything the narrator wants it to be.

When the narrator arrives home, he discovers that time has passed much differently for Divney, who is now sixteen years older, married, and the father of young children. The narrator is invisible to all but Divney, and, shocked, Divney drops dead from a heart attack. As he lays dying, Divney reveals that the narrator should have died because the cash box had a bomb in it, and it exploded when the narrator located the box under the floor of Mathers's house.



The narrator leaves his home and meets Divney on the road. They ignore one another and both walk to the police station. There they encounter Pluck, who asks them if they're there about a bicycle.