No Country for Old Men
In the desert country along the Texas–Mexico border in 1980, Llewelyn Moss — a welder and Vietnam veteran out hunting — comes across a cluster of shot-up trucks, a load of heroin, and a case containing more than two million dollars in cash. He takes the money, knowing it will be missed, and in doing so places himself and his young wife, Carla Jean, in the path of forces far beyond his control.
Hunting Moss is Anton Chigurh, a killer who moves through the story like a principle rather than a man, dispatching anyone between him and the money with chilling detachment. Trailing them both is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a decent, weary lawman whose reflections frame the novel, as he confronts violence he can neither prevent nor comprehend and questions his own place in a country that seems to be slipping away from him.
Originally conceived as a screenplay, Cormac McCarthy's stripped-down, propulsive thriller is a meditation on fate, free will, and the changing face of evil — later adapted into the Coen brothers' Academy Award-winning film.
A welder and Vietnam veteran who takes the drug-money satchel and becomes the target of a manhunt.
An aging sheriff whose reflective narration frames the story's meditation on evil.
A remorseless, philosophically detached hitman pursuing Moss and the money.