No Country for Old Men

First Line:

I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didn't want to go but I did. I sure didn't want to go.

Description:

In Cormac McCarthy's ninth novel, his first in seven years, Llewellyn Moss, a hunter in McCarthy's Texas border country, happens upon $2 million in cash and a small fortune in heroin (as well as a heap of dead bodies), takes the money and drugs, and goes into hiding. This sets in motion a chain of events revolving around Sheriff Bell, the book's true hero--a brooding, introspective man haunted by the human capacity for evil (and by the ambiguities of his own life). The cast of characters also includes a completely amoral thief and murderer on the run after a prison escape, and the drug lord who is trying to track down his missing millions. McCarthy's gripping blood-soaked saga is both a compelling adventure story and a meditation on the horrors that humans are sometimes prey to.

Selected Reviews:

"[A] formidable display of stunningly written scenes....Magnificent writing...makes the best case yet for putting McCarthy on a pedestal just below the one occupied by William Faulkner."

--Kirkus