High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Third Policeman is a novel by Irish author 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 The book remained unpublished until his death in 1966.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 in 1967.