Editor’s note: Cormac McCarthy’s new book, The Road, was released last week. If you haven’t yet discovered his last book, No Country for Old Men, we highly recommend reading it too. This review (originally published in May) explains why we love it.

I’m sometimes a sucker for a stark, suspenseful western. Well, I mean “contemporary westerns,” which are less spaghetti and more pesto, less Louis L’Amour and more Annie Proulx. There’s Postcards, where Proulx surreptitiously unspools the westward flight and simmering turmoil of a man who’s (accidentally?) murdered his fiancée. There’s Wizard and Glass, the captivating, gunslinging, 704-page backstory in Stephen King‘s seven-book Dark Tower series. And now there’s No Country for Old Men.

Sometimes contemporary westerns are “high country”: literary works of art as clear and certain as summer skies in Montana. Other times, they’re “low country”: reads as rousing and testosterone-spiked as the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. In No Country, Cormac McCarthy reaches middle ground, skillfully merging both styles and forcing readers to gaze at the Rio Grande from his unique, intriguing perspective. It’s an approach that kept me backtracking at times and, about two-thirds into the novel, left me feeling completely and suddenly thrown off what had been a bucking, kicking, careering bronco.

After being bucked out of the book, I was a little dazed. Had what happened really just happened? Well, pardner, yes it had. And after sitting there in the dust and detritus of the rodeo arena for a while, I came to realize why I think McCarthy had (bravely, brilliantly) decided to leave me and my fellow riders/readers planted there.

McCarthy writes beautifully. His dialogue is clean, spare, and yet packs a punch. His landscapes can be photographic—brown edged and sepia toned. And his characters breathe and bite and bump into things. But is he a storyteller? Stephen King spins tales like kids twirl tops. But my previous (limited) experience with McCarthy had left me with the impression that his books were comely but not compelling. I abandoned All the Pretty Horses midway through that novel, feeling like I’d been interminably wandering its vast deserts. But I’m happy to report that my trek through the sand and sagebrush in No Country was very involving—thrilling at times—thanks to strong storytelling.

Spoiler alert: Specific plot points of this title are revealed in this review beyond this point.

In short, No Country is the story of three men: a (gritty) hunter who stumbles upon a drug-trafficker murder and $2.4 million in the Texas desert; the (grittier) headhunter who’s tracking down the millions and, with the mind of a predator, is capable of wreaking senseless misery; and the (grittiest) sheriff, who’s charged with sifting through all the spilled blood and guts in the hope of exercising justice. Told through the bloodshot eyes of these men, No Country begins like a shot. The pace is frenzied for the first two-thirds, like I indicated earlier. And then the last third is suddenly a whimper. With the bang of the beginning still echoing, the suspense and story arc abruptly end when one of the lead characters is suddenly dead—killed in the margins, outside even our peripheral vision. It’s an incredulous moment. The overarching build-up of the novel is stopped in its still-warm tracks, with scores of pages still to traverse.

Say what you will about McCarthy, but this cowboy has cojones. And a cabeza too. He used that head and constructed this surprise development to rip his readers out of their very satisfying cougar-and-mouse western and insert them into the real world. It was really easy for me to suspend reality and gobble up the action. But McCarthy seems to understand that life and fiction are more complex—more human—than that. So the chase ends (as it invariably does in such Rio Grande drug wars), and when those left standing start to limp away, we get to walk along with them and their inward “afterwards” for a time. While initially unexpected, it’s ultimately a thoughtful and thought-provoking adios.