Take the Money and Run

By Lev Grossman

It is one of the eternal laws of the genre that every fictional serial killer must have a grisly idiosyncrasy. Even Cormac McCarthy, a novelist to whose name the phrase "American master" frequently attaches itself, must bow to this rule. Thus Chigurh, the coldly philosophical fiend of No Country for Old Men (Knopf; 309 pages), McCarthy's first book in seven years, carries a signature weapon, a handheld pneumatic stun gun of the kind used on cattle in slaughterhouses. And it's not just distinctive! It baffles investigators, and it's handy for breaking locks. It's like a Swiss Army knife for psychos.

But No Country for Old Men is not merely a serial-killer novel, although it works perfectly well as one. In fact, it begins in an entirely different genre, when a good-hearted mug named Moss stumbles onto the remains of a drug deal gone bad: six bodies out in the desert and a satchel full of $2.4 million in very hot cash. After some mental hand wringing, Moss takes the money and runs, knowing that whoever set up the deal will probably come after both it and him. "It's a mess, aint it Sheriff?" a local deputy says of the situation. Comes the world-weary reply: "If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here."

Running after Moss are that world-weary local sheriff, whose name is Bell, and the murderous Chigurh, who works for the druglords but makes it a matter of principle to whack anybody who looks at him funny, and some who don't. Chigurh isn't just testy; he's mesmerized by his power over life and death and fascinated by the vagaries of chance that spare some people and bring others within range of his little air-powered friend. "Even a nonbeliever might find it useful to model himself after God," he tells a prospective victim.

What transpires in No Country is very similar to the events in many thrillers--there are machine pistols and motels and tracking devices, shoot-outs and getaways and clever displays of hard-boiled outlaw tradecraft--but when they're expertly staged and pitilessly lighted by McCarthy, they somehow mean more than in an ordinary thriller. No Country is suffused with Modernist melancholy, a sense that our civilization is dying and all we have ahead of us are endless salt flats of moral and cultural aridity. Sheriff Bell sees people like Chigurh as avatars of things to come. "I aint sure we've seen these people before," he growls. "Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even." Bell's gloominess sometimes verges on kids-these-days curmudgeonliness, but there are moments when it feels like a genuine diagnosis of the postmillennial malady, a scary illumination of the oncoming darkness. And if it aint, it'll do till one gets here.