Many thanks to Carrington Tarr, for writing our inaugural book review. Hers, I hope, will be the first of many reviews and other features we publish in an effort to make this website become a more useful, living thing, updated more than once a year.
Guest Blog: Short Review of The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly
The opening pages of The Bullet, Mary Louise Kelly’s second entry into the thriller genre in as many years, find her heroine, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, in a disturbing quandary: an MRI scan for wrist pain reveals a bullet lodged in the base of her neck. The professor, an introverted, single 37-year-old named Caroline Cashion, has no clue how the bullet got there, but spends the rest of the book finding out. Her search takes readers through the streets of Washington, DC (Georgetowners, especially, will recognize favorite spots -- ahem, Patisserie Poupon), Atlanta and Paris, among other locales.
The Bullet includes all the requirements for a great beach read — murder, lies, romance, even humor — and adds well-researched and credible information on subjects ranging from 19th century France to how to track down a forgotten will. This isn’t surprising, considering Kelly is a former NPR national security correspondent who has traveled the globe and covered “the spy beat,” as she says in her bio. But what is surprising is her heroine, a multi-layered, flawed woman who defies stereotyping and just may shock readers at the end. Kelly’s is a well-written, fast-paced thriller, one worth picking up and staying with until you reach the last page — something that won’t be hard to do.
Carrington Tarr is a fellow Vanderbilt graduate, mother of three and a compulsive reader. She is also a writer, whose words have appeared in the Washington Post and Washingtonian, among other outlets, as well as on her own blog, Through the Trees.