Description
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Just gone. Vanished.
In the blink of an eye. DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts.
Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat’s instincts come up against Lock’s logic. But when the two missing person’s cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.
AI versus human experience. Logic versus instinct. With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?
In the Blink of an Eye is a dazzling debut from an exciting new voice and asks us what we think it means to be human.
‘So I started reading this morning and ten hours later I’ve finished it! It’s so, SO good – really properly compelling, impossible to put down – I was desperate for the solution to the mystery – but so human and moving and massively thought-provoking on what makes us human’ Laura Marshall
‘It’s so much more than a dystopian police procedural and asks questions about who we are and what it means to be human. Brilliant’ Nikki Smith
‘Thrilling, thought-provoking and cinematic – a slam dunk for movie/TV adaptation’ Alexandra Sokoloff, author of the Huntress Moon thrillers
Susan Barsby (verified owner) –
New Year, new crime series! This is the publishing debut of Jo Callaghan and the first in what looks to be a great police procedural series. Thanks to Bert for sending my copy with lovely coordinating ribbon too.
I don’t know about you, but I often find police procedurals to be quite formulaic these days. The detective is jaded, divorced and seen as reckless by their superiors despite always producing results. Yawn. So it’s already refreshing to find a detective that is professional, good at their job and regarded as an asset by their boss, as DCS Kat Frank is here.
Kat is, however, something of a mess. Recently widowed, she is struggling with grief and trying to hold it all together for the sake of her son Cam. So when she is offered the chance to pilot a new crime fighting project, she jumps at it. Pairing with Lock, an AI device that can analyse data in seconds, Kat is given some cold missing person cases to solve. Will her years of experience and her human instinct be better regarded than the logical theories and probability of a robot?
We’ve seen from news stories that the law is way behind technology in many cases so this is a fascinating premise and allowing a computer to do the analysis of cold cases and data that would take humans weeks to complete can only be a good thing. But we all know that computers can’t do everything and that a good gut instinct is not replaceable with code… yet. So how will Kat and Lock work together?
I really enjoyed this. It was great to see a female detective be respected by her peers and superiors, and be allowed to be good at her job and at most aspects of her personal life. It still feels different to have women portrayed like this.
But the emotional aspects of Kat’s work, her feelings of total loss and grief over her husband’s death are very real too. This is a real person trying to get through the day and use her emotional intelligence in the right way. The book covers the different ways that grief can hit you so well and Kat is a great character, easy to imagine in the mind’s eye as you read.
This is a well thought out book, making the case for changes in police procedure but also pointing out that we all can connect better. There’s also a lot of humour, the interactions between Kat and Lock are often very funny and well observed, providing depth and insight into human behaviour. It asks questions about what it is that makes us human, and what we need to keep sight of as we go through life.
In The Blink of An Eye is a great debut novel and the start of a real enjoyable crime series. I look forward to the next book.