Caroline Cashion has a life that is well-ordered and intellectually stimulating, if quiet. A professor of French Literature at Georgetown University, she leads a dignified life, her past a routine list of appropriate family-oriented memories that give her nothing but joy. However, her past actually calls her out as a Batman figure, wounded without knowing it, having witnessed something truly terrible that has parked itself somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind. And there is the beginning of THE BULLET, Mary Louise Kelly’s new thriller about what happens when everything you think you know is wrong.

A bullet is found lodged in Caroline’s skull. She had no idea it was there or where it could have come from, but the reality of that bullet begins a journey of ever-darkening proportions as she learns a completely new truth about her life, her family, and all the things she knows that she doesn’t know she knows.

"There is a sense of urgency in the writing that is developed in the storyline, so they work hand in hand to do what all good thrillers do: make you race to finish one page to get to the next, as there is new information being uncovered all along."

Kelly is a reporter for NPR and the BBC, and it is with a journalist’s quick precision and an eye for getting at the truth that she infuses every scene. As Caroline becomes enmeshed in the realities of her otherwise unknown life trajectory, Kelly keeps us on the edges of our seats by adding an additional danger --- the killer who put that bullet in her head as a baby is still out there, and that bullet could lead to his conviction and arrest and being put away forever. Caroline must make a decision that makes her discoveries all the more painful. The killer could find out that she now knows the truth and come after her. But will she unravel all those clues before that man and her past catch up to her?

To make matters worse, the bullet is the actual bullet that killed someone close to her, the woman whose murder Caroline will avenge in the course of doing all her other sleuthing. But the emotional toll this rush of new information takes on a woman who had her single life down to a science gives the book its visceral command over the reader’s attention, head and heart.

THE BULLET moves quickly. There is a sense of urgency in the writing that is developed in the storyline, so they work hand in hand to do what all good thrillers do: make you race to finish one page to get to the next, as there is new information being uncovered all along. It is hard to put this book down; you feel like you are living in real time with Caroline as she undergoes this dangerous and painful process. Kelly’s language is bare and informative; there is no needless description or characters who color the story. Caroline is a fully fleshed-out woman with a unique and compelling need --- and so the narrative flies along without hitting a roadblock at any point.

This is the perfect book to take along on your spring break sojourn. Enjoy!