"The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien
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Read Randy Schaub's review in the web magazine Bookslut:
The story is a strange dream-journey that at times is so substantial that the reader will find himself double-checking the thickness of the book itself, amazed that the whole thing fits in so slim a volume. If anything, the book presents a problem in that it leaves a reviewer with little to say, beyond a couple paragraphs of repetitive praise.
In The Third Policeman, our hero and narrator, a nameless young man with a wooden leg, assists in a money-motivated killing, and, after trying to retrieve the stashed goods some time later, passes into a strange otherness - a place that superficially resembles the Irish countryside, but which casually disobeys the normal laws of How Things Work. He encounters a small building of impermanent and shifting geometry which turns out to be the local barracks - it is here that he meets the policemen. The novel has that special quality - the fantastic made believable, yet retaining its power to amaze - that is the hallmark of authors like Borges, Kafka, or Barthelme. The events are alternately frightening, baffling, and hilarious, and are brought into three dimensions by perfect, musical prose.
Synopsis from Amazon:
Within the boudaries of this novel the reader will find: a murder thriller; a comic satire about an archetypal village police force; a surrealistic vision of eternity; the story of a tender, brief unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle; and a chilling fable of unending guilt.
A book review from Amazon:
This is the most perplexing conundrum of a book that I have ever read. It is the work of a sheer brilliant comic genius. Along the way the reader encounters mad policemen who are obsessed with bicycles, murderers, amazing theories related to physics, time and size and the wackiest footnotes ever. This is the most fantastic flight of fantasy which will make you ask yourself countless questions - and the ending is mind blowing.