Rural Texas, 1980. Llewelyn Moss, out hunting in the middle of nowhere, finds the remains of a drug buy that went wrong: dead bodies, shot-up cars, black tar heroin. And a satchel with two million dollars in cash. Moss takes the money and runs. He knows it’s stupid, he knows that people will come after him, and he does it anyway.

Anton Chigurh is the worst of the killers on his trail. Relentless, re­morse­less, untroubled by conscience, and offended by the wrongness of Moss’s act. He and Moss will be locked in a dance of death.

The bodies were found in Sheriff Bell’s patch. Ed Tom Bell is near retirement, an old-school lawman at odds with modern life. Bell is slow, deliberate, and perceptive. He wants to catch Moss before Chigurh does.

McCarthy’s prose is spare and evocative, as dry as the harsh landscape. These men are laconic, not given to frivolous chitchat.

Highly rec­om­mend­ed. I’ll have to get around to the Coen Brothers’ movie soon.