Throughout the story, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, wanting to protect Moss, tries to catch up with him before the bad guys do.

In the process, Moss has to worry about protecting his wife and her mother, thus adding another layer of complication to his precarious situation. Moss tries to stay one step ahead of the drug mafia and two assassins, Anton Chigurg and Carson Wells, hired independently of each other to find Moss and the money. Thus begins a fast-paced read to what seems to be a foregone dark conclusion. He goes back, however, to bring water to one of the drug runners who is not yet dead, and unfortunately some associates of the dead man show up before he can make a clean getaway. He decides to keep the money and leaves the scene without being discovered. One of the lead characters, Llewelyn Moss, while hunting, stumbles across a satchel of money and a lot of dead bodies at a drug deal gone wrong out in the middle of nowhere. He does not use quotation marks for dialog, which can be distracting, but I found that it was not really an obstacle.

This matches the stark environs of Texas, where his novel is set. McCarthy writes in an austere style, reminiscent of Hemingway, that offers a bleak commentary on human nature. If you haven't read the book ' No Country for Old Men' or heard of author Cormac McCarthy, then you might want to give this one a look. You may have seen the film 'No Country for Old Men' back in 2007 when it won the Cohen Brothers the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with a number of other Oscars.

Book review no country for old men