No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
 The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Ed Tom Bell), set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the Mexican-American border in southwest Texas, in Terrell County. While Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope, he stumbles across the aftermath of a drug-deal gone bad, which has left everyone dead but a single badly wounded Mexican who pleads with Moss for water. Moss responds that he doesn't have any and searches the rest of the vehicles, finding a truck full of heroin. He searches for the "last man standing" and finds him dead some ways off under a tree, with a satchel containing $2.4 million in cash. He takes the money and returns back home. Later, however, he feels remorse for leaving the wounded man and returns to the scene with a jug of water, only to find that he has been shot and killed since he left him. When Moss looks back to his truck parked on the ridge overlooking the valley, another truck is there. As soon as he tries to run, he is seen, which sparks a tense chase by gunmen in the other truck. This is only the beginning of a hunt for Moss that stretches for most of the remaining novel. After escaping from the gunmen at the scene of the drug deal massacre, Llewelyn sends his wife, Carla Jean Moss, to her mother in Odessa while he leaves his home with the money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell investigates the drug crime while trying to protect Moss and his young wife, with the aid of other law enforcement. The sheriff is haunted by his actions in World War II, leaving his unit to die, for which he received a Bronze Star. Now in his late 50s, Bell has spent most of his life attempting to make up for the incident when he was a 21-year-old soldier. He makes it his quest to resolve the case and save Moss. Complicating things is the arrival of Anton Chigurh, a hitman hired to recover the money. Chigurh uses a captive bolt pistol (called a "stungun" in the text) to kill many of his victims (and to destroy several cylinder locks to open doors), as well as a silenced shotgun. Carson Wells, a rival hitman and ex-Special Forces officer who is familiar with Chigurh, is also on the trail of the stolen money. After a brutal shootout that spills across the Mexican border and leaves both Moss and Chigurh wounded, Moss recovers at a Mexican hospital while Chigurh patches himself up in a hotel room with stolen supplies. While recuperating, Moss is approached by Wells, who offers to give him protection in exchange for the satchel and tells him his current location and phone number, instructing him to call when he has "had enough." After recovering and leaving the hotel room, Chigurh finds Wells and murders him just as Moss calls to negotiate the exchange of money. After answering Wells's phone, Chigurh tells Moss that he will kill Carla Jean unless he hands over the satchel. Moss remains defiant and soon after, calls Carla Jean and tells her that he will meet up with her at a motel in El Paso. After much deliberation, Carla Jean decides to inform Sheriff Bell about the meeting and its location. Unfortunately for her and her husband, this call is traced and provides Moss's location to some of his hunters. At the motel, Sheriff Bell arrives to find Moss murdered by a band of Mexicans, who also were after the drug deal cash. Later that night Chigurh arrives at the scene and retrieves the satchel from the airduct in Moss's room. He returns it to its owner and later travels to Carla Jean's house and shoots her after flipping a coin to decide her fate. Soon after, he is hit by a car, which leaves him severely injured but still alive. After bribing a pair of teenagers to remain silent about the car accident, he limps off down the road. After a long investigation that fails to locate Chigurh, Bell decides to retire and drives away from the local courthouse feeling overmatched and defeated. For the rest of the book, Bell describes two dreams that he had the previous night. In one, he met his father in town and borrowed some money from him. In the second, Bell was riding his horse through a snow-covered pass in the mountains. As he rode, he could see his father up ahead of him carrying a moon colored horn lit with fire, and he knew that his father would ride on through the pass and fix a fire out in the dark and cold and that it would be waiting for him when he arrived. And then he woke up.