With the stage thus set, and with Sheriff Bell intermittently stepping in as a sort of Greek chorus lamenting the decline of American values, McCarthy quickly introduces to Anton Chigurh (pronounced ant-on-sugar), a frightening model of the new psychotic who is sure to soon lurch onto the American landscape everywhere, and to Llewelyn Moss, a peace-loving welder who in years past was an army sniper of some renown in Vietnam. Llewelyn is out doing what he loves best, hunting alone in the majestic Rio Grande area that he and his young wife call home.

Moss’s tranquil hunting outing is suddenly interrupted by his discovery of several bullet-riddled vehicles and dead bodies. In one vehicle he finds a load of heroin and a case containing over $2 million in cash. Moss, well aware of the extreme risk he is taking, decides to take the cash.

Within hours, Chigurh is chasing Moss across the southwest. Like Nietzsche on acid and steroids, Chigurh is mesmerizing in his studied practice of mayhem and terror without any glimmer of remorse or guilt. To do much of his up-close destruction and killing he employs a diabolical device devised for dispatching beasts of burden, a pneumatic gun that fires a huge metal bolt. Deadpans a former Special Forces officer hired to beat Chigurh to the cash, “He’s a psychopathic killer but so what? There’s plenty of them around.” Well, maybe not as dedicated as Anton Chigurh.

’No Country For Old Men’ is not for the weak hearted or those with queasy stomachs. Like several of McCarthy’s previous books, the violence and killing is random and brutal, almost as random and plentiful as any given night in urban America today. But violence aside, McCarthy writes like a blessed but fallen angel obsessed with earning his way back to heaven and God’s good graces. For some, including many of McCarthy’s diehard fans, this work may come across as a pulp thriller but don’t be mistaken: McCarthy’s book grapples mightily with age-old issues: the fate of human destiny, good and evil, light and darkness, love in the face of extreme odds. It is difficult not to imagine that McCarthy was mindful of Gnostic concepts when he set pen to page.

Fans of McCarthy’s earlier work may be put off by his decided new turn in to territory that dangerously resembles terrain best trodden by Hollywood producers, but I for one found his new book to be nothing less than a thrill a minute blessed with the wonderfully vivid and sparse writing McCarthy is known for. ‘No Country For Old Men’ is raw masculine writing at its finest.

H.P. Albarelli Jr. is the author of THE HEAP, his first novel published several months ago. He lives in Florida and Vermont.

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.