Firearms abound in the novel, among them, "a huge Colt revolver", "a Winchester Pistol-grip shotgun loaded with "00 Buck", and a ".356 Magnum" handgun.

Automobiles, including late model Cadillac Broughams, a Jaguar, a 1951 Coupe de Ville and a Ford pickup also appear as plot devices.

One thread of the narrative follows Gambol's morphine-laced convalescence from his leg wound, under the care of a former Army nurse Mary, once the wife of Juarez.

John "Jay" Capra, a biker - and Sol's lover - agrees to conceal the fugitive couple for several days at the roadhouse until Anita's court date.

Jaurez and his grotesque male secretary, The Tall Man (he stands 5 feet, eight inches), arrive in North California to personally liquidate Luntz.

[2][3] Nobody Move, a crime thriller filled with "snappy, wiseacre dialogue", is one of a number of "slimmer works of fiction" that Johnson wrote after completing his chef-d'œuvre Tree of Smoke in 2007.

"[9] Critic Edwin Turner concurs: "Johnson's economy resonates from his tight plotting and structure down to his cool, concise sentences.

Cinematic and highly visual, it recalls some of the Coen brothers' finest work...[11]Based on the crime fiction genre, Nobody Move showcases "noir archetypes" developed and popularized in Post-war American literature and film, namely "the hard-luck loser in over his head, the femme fatale with a troubled past (and present), the sadistic thug and his moll, and the sinister mastermind."

[15]Means adds: "Johnson is one of the last of the hard-core American realist writers, working—in his own way—along a line that might be charted from Melville and Stephen Crane, with a detour through Flannery O'Connor and Don DeLillo..."[16]