   the third policeman is a novel by irish writer brian o'nolan, writing under the pseudonym flann o'brien. it was written between 1939 and 1940, but after it initially failed to find a publisher, the author withdrew the manuscript from circulation and claimed he had lost it. the book remained unpublished until his death in 1966. it was printed by macgibbon & kee in 1967. == plot summary == the third policeman is set in rural ireland and is narrated by a dedicated amateur scholar of de selby, a scientist and philosopher. the narrator, whose name we never learn, is orphaned at a young age. at boarding school, he discovers the work of de selby and becomes a fanatically dedicated student of it. one night he breaks his leg under mysterious circumstances&nbsp;â "if you like, it was broken for me"&nbsp;â and he is ultimately fitted with a wooden leg to replace the original one. on returning to his family home, he meets and befriends john divney who is in charge of the family farm and pub. over the next few years, the narrator devotes himself to the study of de selby's work and leaves divney to run the family business. by the time the narrator is thirty, he has written what he believes to be the definitive critical work on de selby, but does not have enough money to publish the work. divney observes that mathers, a local man, "is worth a packet of potato-meal" and eventually it dawns on the narrator that divney plans to rob and kill mathers. the narrator and divney encounter mathers one night on the road and divney knocks mathers down with a bicycle pump. the narrator, prompted by divney, finishes mathers off with a spade, and then notices that divney has disappeared with mathers's cash box. when divney returns he refuses to reveal where the cash box is, and fends off the narrator's repeated inquiries. to ensure that divney does not retrieve the box unobserved, the narrator becomes more and more inseparable from divney, eventually sharing a bed with him: "the situation was a queer one and neither of us liked it". three years pass, in which the previously amicable relationship between the narrato
1960s_fantasy_novels 1967_novels Novels_by_Flann_O\'Brien Novels_published_posthumously Novels_set_in_Ireland Philosophical_novels