My first reaction? Brilliant! I loved it, and can’t wait to read the next book in the series!
I was skeptical at first, as this book sounded as though it had science fiction vibes. I got over my skepticism sharpish. The characters were so well drawn and the police investigation so compelling, that I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough!
Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank is a forty-five year old widow and the mother of a teenage son. She lost her husband to cancer just a year ago and her grief is still raw. It is her first time back to work after her husband’s death and she wants a ‘safe’ job to reassure her son Cam that he won’t lose another parent. Her boss puts her on a pilot project – to head the first ever human-machine police team in the UK. She is to work with an AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entity) on some missing person cold cases. Her team will include four people if you include the AIDE)
AIDE Lock – is a wristband around Kat’s wrist. However, ‘he’ can be made to look human via hologram. When he is, he is a tall, slim black man. Think Idris Alba with slight touches of Spock.
Detective Inspector Rayan Hassan – is a smart dresser with a law degree and a high conviction rate. He challenges Kat’s authority at times and they lock horns on occasion.
Detective Sergeant Debbie Browne – is a twenty-four year old who has been with the Warwickshire Police for six years. Debbie has little self-esteem and is constantly apologizing. She is single, and has just found out she is pregnant.
Professor Okonedo – a diminutive Asian woman with a chip on her shoulder and a huge grievance against the police. She blames them for her brother’s unjust incarceration. Though not official a member of the police, she is AIDE Lock’s ‘handler’.
Several missing persons cases have been relegated to the ‘cold case’ files. With Lock’s assistance, the team chooses two cases to work on.
Both young men seemed to have vanished from their lives ‘in the blink of an eye‘.
When the team finds evidence to link the two cases, they realize that this might turn into an active murder or abduction case. Lock’s contribution is invaluable. When things turn personal for Kat, she realizes that her ‘team’ is not yet the cohesive unit she might have wished for…
With themes of medical ethics, abduction, genomics, artificial intelligence, and personal bereavement, this novel was a mesmerizing read. Machine vs. human. How far away from this premise are we really? Not far I think. Machines can make decisions based on facts and algorithms, while humans can make decisions on ‘gut instinct’. Sometimes those decisions have to be made ‘in the blink of an eye‘, especially when lives are at stake.
The author has taken some elements of her own life and incorporated them into the book – lending the narrative a ring of authenticity.
I really came to care for all of the characters and I’m eager to learn more about them in the next book.
The ending was satisfying and proved to be an excellent segue into the next book “Leave No Trace“. Highly recommended to all fans of well written police procedural fiction.
This review was written voluntarily and my rating was in no way influenced by the fact that I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel from Random House Publishing via NetGalley.
Publication date: August 6, 2024
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780593736838 ASIN: B0CW9GLNBH – 432 pages
Jo Callaghan works fulltime as a senior strategist, where she has carried out research into the future impact of AI and genomics on the workforce. She was a student of the Writers’ Academy Course (Penguin Random House), was long listed for the Myslexia Novel Writing Competition and Bath Novel Competition. After losing her husband to cancer in 2019 when she was just forty-nine, she started writing In the Blink of an Eye, her debut crime novel. Published to critical-acclaim, it was selected by Val McDermid for her New Blood panel of the best debuts of 2023 and for BBC Two’s Between the Covers Book Club. TV rights were sold in a major acquisition. The sequel, Leave No Trace was published in March 2024.
Connect with Jo Callaghan via Twitter and/or Instagram.
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