In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan

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?

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In the Blink of an Eye is a novel that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now.  After only a little prodding from the wonderful Eva at Novel Deelights, I finally got around to it.  I’m glad I did – I absolutely loved it, so much so that immediately bought and read the sequel, Leave No Trace.  Look out for my thoughts on that one soon.

I love the idea behind the novel.  DCS Kat Frank returns to work to take part in a pilot study that will test the capabilities of the world’s first Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity (AIDE).  Kat, AIDE Lock, and their small team begin to dig into cold cases, looking into the disappearance of two young men from the West Midlands area who vanished without a trace.  These cases are absolutely fascinating, and both prove to be complex – I loved slowly discovering what was going on.  It’s brilliant and a bit dark and shows that Callaghan is definitely not just about style over substance – this novel stands out as an excellent police procedural even without the added element of the AI detective.

Kat is a brilliant character and I love her passion for what she does.  She cares about her work and the victims of crime, as well as considering the wider impact on a victim’s family.  To say that she is sceptical of this trial is something of an understatement as she has experienced firsthand, with devastating consequences, the ways in which AI can get things wrong.  Kat is someone who relies upon her gut instincts, and this is the first bone of contention between Kat and Lock as Lock is unable to follow Kat’s hunches which can seem to be something of a jump when looked at from a purely logical standpoint. 

I have since learned that what she refers to a ‘hunch’ is often a rapid judgement based upon years of experience and thought processes too fast for most humans to comprehend.

Balanced with Kat’s gut feelings and wealth of experience is Lock’s logic.  He (I just can’t refer to him as an “it” as Kat insists upon doing) knows all of the statistics anyone could ever need and plenty that they don’t.  And while it logically makes sense to look at the most likely outcome first, people aren’t statistics – there’s always someone to buck the trend.  Lock does come in handy in the rapid processing and summarisation of vast quantities of data – he can read and interpret a huge amount of information far quicker than any human can.  Having said that, he’s so much more than a glorified computer.  When he and Kat do work together, they are brilliant – looking at things from different angles, exploring options, and challenging each other’s thought processes. 

Callaghan makes some great observations throughout the novel, particularly around the concern that AI will take jobs away from real people.  I think that what’s shown here is that there are some things that an AI just isn’t capable of (yet?) and so will never fully replace a person or replicate what they bring to complex situations such as the investigation of a serious crime.  It’s a more positive message than most literature and other forms of fiction typically give.  I think that increased usage of AI is inevitable, and while we’re a little way off of the idea of AIDE Lock, it’s probably also not quite so far away as I’d like to believe.  I’m really looking forward to seeing where Callaghan takes this idea throughout the series.

In the Blink of an Eye is a brilliant start to what I fully expect to become a new favourite series and author.  God damn it, Eva – like I don’t have enough books to read already!

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Book 5 of 15 Books of Summer.