The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn.

I would like to see the film version, so ordered the book and read it in a day. No Country for Old Men is fairly typical Cormac McCarthy. The setting is more contemporary than usual, and the vernacular less Scriptural, but the violence and the prime movers of plot are familiar, as are the themes. The novel lacks a white-hatted hero; those who come closest to this ideal are dispatched gruesomely. One is left wondering if the brutal killer Chigurh has a point when he explains his own morality, his method of living: "I have no enemies. I don't permit such a thing." When contrasted with the "good" characters in the novel, Chigurh comes across as pure and focused and certainly the least troubled by conscience.