The Third Policeman

Written after At Swim Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is not as fantastic or chaotic as the previous work -- lack of focus only shows up in the copious footnotes, regarding a fictional Irish polymath named de Selby, whose theories are revealed to progress from eccentric to insane as the novel unfolds.

The book is apparently intended to be read as a straightforward murder-mystery, but a major fact preventing this from occurring is revealed in the Introduction (in the form of quotation from a letter written by the author). While this doesn't spoil the big reveal entirely (because it's still an interesting journey), it does take a little air out of the tyres.

Our narrator is an unnamed simpleton who inherits his parents' farm and public house, and is convinced by his co-tenant (due to their poor means) to murder a wealthy, miserly landowner. This act results in the co-tenant hiding the dead man's cashbox, which causes the narrator to make himself and his co-tenant inseparable: "the situation was a queer one, and neither of us liked it."

These events then lead to the narrator encountering the man he had murdered in the latter's house, discovering a strange country right down the road from where he had lived, conversing with his soul, meeting some very odd policemen, and riding an atypical bicycle, among other fantastic occurrences and adventures.

Overall, The Third Policeman is an engaging, surreal work, but not necessarily the best introduction to Flann O'Brien, nor his best work (of course, this is my humble opinion, not the critical consensus). (Some critics disagree here -- Hugh Kenner is quoted in the Wikipedia article on this as writing ". . .There's no killing a piece of mythic power like that," in his essay The Fourth Policeman (which is available via Google Books, and is worth reading after digesting the novel)). The book's ending produces a wry smirk, and is that not reason enough to pick it up?

The Drunkard's Walk

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives illustrates the difficulties of writing a popular book on statistics: before getting to one's point, one must spend several chapters introducing concepts in successive layers, to build a foundation for the reader to understand the eventual point. Leonard Mlodinow does this here, with the first nine of the ten chapters building the foundation for the tenth. Although such a narrative structure could prove awkward and threaten to capsize, each of the ten chapters here are engaging, filled with historical anecdotes, and clearly explain the concepts and tenets of statistics and probability. Unfortunately, the final, eponymous chapter, while the realization of all the concepts discussed previously, feels almost truncated, because since the author spent nine chapters getting us to this point, it feels like its assertions could be fleshed out over several more chapters, rather than being terminated where it is.

This is certainly a good starting point as a popular introduction to statistics -- although many of the concepts introduced are counterintuitive, they're explained and fleshed out relatively quickly and easily -- I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Bayesian probability in this regard. While not nearly as mathy as it could have been -- the mathematics of probability are glossed over (none of those hideous upside-down 'u' symbols) -- The Drunkard's Walk does feature paragraphs liberally sprinkled with numbers. The only issue here is that any math is free form, and some pages read like giant word problems. Rarely is everything tied together neatly with equations, which can make for necessary re-reading. However, as a popular primer, one would be hard-pressed to do better. (A slightly more in depth look at similar themes is available in Chances Are . . . by Michael and Ellen Kaplan.)