Book Review

No Country for Old Men (2005)

EW's GRADE
B

Details Writer: Cormac McCarthy; Genre: Fiction; Publisher: Knopf

While hunting antelope in the Texas desert, small-town welder Llewellyn Moss runs into the leftovers of a drug deal gone wrong: six dead and dying Mexicans, a gut-shot dog, and a bag full of cash. Moss takes the suitcase (always a mistake) and starts running for his life from a ruthless and ingenious killer named Chigurh, a droid-like figure who feels neither remorse nor fear. With his stripped-down Marlboro Man prose, Cormac McCarthy knows how to write a bang-up Western thriller. But when he strives for grand mythic effect in the second half of No Country for Old Men, his taut, suspenseful story quickly heads south.

Originally posted Jul 15, 2005 Published in issue #830 Jul 22, 2005 Order article reprints
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