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Cover of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men

  • 304 pages · about 5 hours
  • First published 2005
  • 45 editions

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1 About this book

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men.

A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law--in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell--can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers--in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives--McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning's headlines. No Country for Old Men is a triumph. (From the Trade Paperback edition).

  • Thrillers
  • Psychological fiction
  • Murderers
  • Drug traffic
  • Sheriffs
  • Treasure troves
  • Texas

2 About Cormac McCarthy

1933–2023

Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American author who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western, post-apocalyptic, and Southern Gothic genres. His works often include graphic depictions of violence, and his writing style is characterized by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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