SOURCE: A review of The Crossing, in World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 1, Winter, 1995, pp. 140-141.

In the following review, Richey comments on McCarthy's obsession with violence and evil in The Crossing, and lauds the author's great descriptive abilities.

The Crossing is the second novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy following All the Pretty Horses, which brought this reclusive writer great popular acclaim when it was named the winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was even optioned for film. Post-Horses readers may not realize that McCarthy is not only someone who may possibly be America's greatest descriptive writer but is also an author uniquely obsessed with violence and evil. Sociopaths, serial killers, necrophiliacs, and murderers populate pages wherein mayhem, blood, and generally prevalent malevolence dominate his early works: The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Child of God, Suttree, and Blood...