No County no joke

You could see how someone would read this and want to make a movie right away. Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men hurtles along at a breakneck — or rather, a compressed air-powered stun gun pace, with only the reflective ruminations of Sheriff Bell offering a breather.

The setup: In early 1980s Texas near the Mexico border, Vietnam vet Llewellyn Moss comes across a drug deal gone bad, and helps himself to a suitcase full of money.

McCarthy doesn't present the internal thought process of the characters, aside from the Bell bits at the beginning of chapters, which come into tighter focus as the book progresses. So while we know why he takes the money (it's a lot of free money), we don't know what makes him return to the scene of the drug deal. He's not stupid, but this was a stupid decision, and the shit hits the fan.

Some weird things: The sheriff's name is Ed Tom Bell, and people actually call him Ed Tom. I guess the two-name name (Joe Don Baker) has gone the way of the bubblegum disciplinary issues in America's schools, as Bell might say. Also, the intentional run-on sentences, and the contractions without apostrophes. OK.

This was supposed to be McCarthy's most accessible work, and I want to check out Blood Meridian which was recommended to me by Tim Jim McGlynn (hey, there's a two-name name), which he said was stranger but better.

Having seen the movie's trailer, I thought the bad guy might be too cartoony, but I didn't think so reading the book. I have a feeling the end of the film won't be as much of an issue if you read the book first, though it definitely slows bigtime. But the last bit of Bell's police work continues to offer insight into some of the overall themes — drug buyers are as much of the problem as dealers (whether we're talking about drugs or not), and stakes keep getting higher.

Awesome crime fiction. You really don't want to put it down, and I knocked it out in two days. Bring on the movie.