Rating: 4
Year: 2005
Genre: Drama
Read again? Maybe
McCarthy's got an unorthodox writing style. No quotes on dialog. Likes to chain things together with "and." That being said, once you get used to McCarthy's style, it's still a good story.
Llewellyn Moss is a former Vietnam War sniper. It's the late '70s, somewhere along the Texas-Mexico border. He's hunting antelope.
He thinks he's made a kill, but the wounded animal was still up on its feet, so Moss has some hiking to do if he's going to get it.
Instead of his prize, he comes across a miniature war zone: dead men lying on the ground, trucks riddled with bullet holes, and one pickup truck loaded with heroin. He does some math, figures that there's a guy missing, and follows his tracks out of the area and into the hills. The dead man's propped up under a tree with a case loaded with more than two million bucks.
He knows he's making a mistake in grabbing the money, but he grabs it and gets the hell out of the area.
He's soon being looked for by a principled killer who won't settle for simply getting his employers' money back. Moss has to die. Nothing personal. It's about the principle and the inconvenience.
On Moss' side is a sheriff who's trying to protect him and an ex-Special Forces guy who can't protect him but is hoping to stop the killings.
If you've seen the movie, you won't miss anything in the book. The screenwriters stayed very close to it.
Showing posts with label Drama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drama. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Shipkiller, The (Justin Scott)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1978
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Read again? Yes
It was only supposed to be a three-week tour, a three-week...okay, no. Wrong shipwreck.
Peter and Carolyn Hardin are crossing the Atlantic aboard their sailboat, the Siren. About 100 miles southwest of the southern tip of England, Siren is shattered and scattered to the seas by Leviathan, an enormous supertanker a third of a mile long and loaded with a million tons of crude oil.
Carolyn is lost.
Hardin wakes up in a hospital in Fowey, Cornwall, on the south end of England, but his nightmare is far from over. There is no justice to be found anywhere: there is no proof that Leviathan ran him down--no body, no wreckage. All official avenues quickly close to him. Driven by grief and fury, Hardin embarks on a vendetta: destroy the monster that killed his wife. Sink Leviathan.
Is he evil? Insane? Certainly many of the other characters think so, but Scott doesn't spend time trying to make us wonder about it. He does pause at points to show us that there is a human being in there, when Hardin is reminded of his dead wife, or when he has nightmares of a great black steel wall coming for him. One touching moment has Hardin realizing that he can't even remember what Carolyn looked like. He reaches for his wallet, seeking a picture of his wife before realizing that there is no picture. His wallet, his pants, these are all things he had to buy after Leviathan killed her. It's only been a few weeks.
I like Scott's style--short, direct sentences that take you where you need to be without a lot of fuss and side trips. He uses dialog for talking rather than explaining, and it has the choppy feel of actual conversation. The writing flows like ocean waves; we are drawn into Hardin's obsession, we see how it drives him to sail all the way into the Persian Gulf for just one shot at his enemy.
Year: 1978
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Read again? Yes
It was only supposed to be a three-week tour, a three-week...okay, no. Wrong shipwreck.
Peter and Carolyn Hardin are crossing the Atlantic aboard their sailboat, the Siren. About 100 miles southwest of the southern tip of England, Siren is shattered and scattered to the seas by Leviathan, an enormous supertanker a third of a mile long and loaded with a million tons of crude oil.
Carolyn is lost.
Hardin wakes up in a hospital in Fowey, Cornwall, on the south end of England, but his nightmare is far from over. There is no justice to be found anywhere: there is no proof that Leviathan ran him down--no body, no wreckage. All official avenues quickly close to him. Driven by grief and fury, Hardin embarks on a vendetta: destroy the monster that killed his wife. Sink Leviathan.
Is he evil? Insane? Certainly many of the other characters think so, but Scott doesn't spend time trying to make us wonder about it. He does pause at points to show us that there is a human being in there, when Hardin is reminded of his dead wife, or when he has nightmares of a great black steel wall coming for him. One touching moment has Hardin realizing that he can't even remember what Carolyn looked like. He reaches for his wallet, seeking a picture of his wife before realizing that there is no picture. His wallet, his pants, these are all things he had to buy after Leviathan killed her. It's only been a few weeks.
I like Scott's style--short, direct sentences that take you where you need to be without a lot of fuss and side trips. He uses dialog for talking rather than explaining, and it has the choppy feel of actual conversation. The writing flows like ocean waves; we are drawn into Hardin's obsession, we see how it drives him to sail all the way into the Persian Gulf for just one shot at his enemy.
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