The Third Policeman Review | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5 Stars) | The Strangest Book I've Ever Enjoyed
⚠️ Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ⚠️
If you haven't read The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, stop here! This review contains a complete plot summary, ending explanation, and discusses the novel's biggest twist.
📚 Quick Stats
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
⚠️ Trigger Warnings
Murder
Death
Violence
Existential themes
Suicide references
Absurdism
Surreal imagery
Alcohol use
🤯 My Thoughts
Well...
What on earth did I just read?
😂
Seriously, though, I think The Third Policeman may be one of the strangest books I've ever enjoyed.
When I finished it, my first thought wasn't, "That was amazing!"
It was more like...
"What the heck..."
And honestly? I mean that as a compliment.
This is one of those rare books where I wasn't completely sure how I felt while reading it, but once I reached the ending, everything changed.
🚲 The Twist That Completely Got Me
I absolutely love books that make me gasp.
And this one did exactly that.
When it's revealed that the narrator actually died right at the beginning of the novel, I just sat there staring into space for a minute.
Suddenly...
Mathers.
The endless looping roads.
The impossible landscape.
The bizarre conversations.
None of it was supposed to make perfect sense because none of it belonged to the normal world in the first place.
That reveal instantly elevated the entire novel for me.
🚴 The Bicycle Theory
Okay.
Can we talk about the bicycles?
Because I still don't fully understand them...
...and somehow I don't mind.
One interpretation I absolutely love is that the famous atomic theory is really satire.
The policemen have built this elaborate scientific explanation that people and bicycles slowly exchange atoms the more they ride.
It's completely ridiculous.
Yet everyone accepts it.
Why?
Because it sounds logical.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized this isn't really about bicycles at all.
It's about how people can construct incredibly detailed, internally consistent theories based on completely absurd assumptions—and once enough people believe them, they simply become "truth."
Honestly?
That idea might be even crazier than people becoming bicycles. 😆
🤔 Did I Understand Everything?
Absolutely not.
There were sections—especially some of the de Selby discussions—where I knew I was reading something clever, but I also knew some of it was flying straight over my head.
Normally that would frustrate me.
Here...it strangely didn't.
Maybe because I never felt like the book was trying to trick me.
It simply invited me into its wonderfully weird little universe and let me figure out as much—or as little—as I could.
📖 Full Plot Summary (SPOILERS)
The unnamed narrator tells the story of how he and his acquaintance John Divney murdered the wealthy old man Mathers in order to steal a mysterious cash box they believed contained a fortune.
Although the narrator carefully planned the murder, Divney secretly hides the cash box from him afterward, claiming he has forgotten where it is.
Obsessed with recovering it, the narrator eventually returns to Divney asking about the cash box. Divney tells the narrator the cash box is inside Mathers's home under a floorboard. The narrator opens the floorboard but doesn't find the cash box.
Instead, he enters a bizarre world inhabited by the eccentric policemen Sergeant Pluck, MacCruiskeen, and Fox.
The policemen spend far more time discussing impossible inventions, the fictional philosopher de Selby, and the famous theory that people exchange atoms with bicycles than they do investigating crimes.
As the narrator wanders through increasingly surreal events, reality becomes less and less reliable.
Roads seem to go nowhere.
Time barely functions.
Death appears strangely ordinary.
The narrator repeatedly encounters Mathers, despite knowing he murdered him.
Throughout the novel, he searches for the missing cash box while trying to understand the strange world around him.
🔍 Ending Explained
Eventually the narrator returns to confront Divney.
There he finally learns the shocking truth.
The bomb hidden inside the cash box exploded the moment he opened it years earlier.
He never survived.
The narrator has been dead for the entire novel.
Everything that follows is his experience in an afterlife—or at least a surreal limbo—where ordinary logic no longer applies.
This revelation suddenly explains why he can encounter Mathers, why the landscape seems trapped in endless loops, and why every attempt to leave simply brings him back where he started.
In the novel's haunting final scene, the narrator arrives once again at the police barracks...
Only to discover another newly dead traveler arriving exactly as he once did.
The cycle begins all over again.
💭 Final Thoughts
This isn't the kind of book I'd recommend to everyone.
If you're looking for a straightforward mystery with clear answers...
Turn around now. 😂
But if you enjoy books that leave you thinking long after you've finished the last page, The Third Policeman is unlike anything I've ever read.
I still don't pretend to understand every symbol.
I'm still not entirely sure what was happening with the policemen.
And I'm convinced someone could spend an entire college semester discussing those bicycles.
But maybe that's exactly the point.
Some books are fun while you're reading them.
Others become more interesting after you've closed the cover.
For me, The Third Policeman definitely belongs in the second category.
📚 Books to Read If You Enjoyed The Third Policeman
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Trial by Franz Kafka
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov🚲😄
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