In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE by Jo Callaghan is an impressive debut, being chosen as the winner of the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasy New Blood Dagger Award and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Callaghan has created some memorable characters: Detective Kat Frank and Lock. The former is a recently widowed Mom to eighteen-year-old Cam who has had his own struggles with grief. Part of a pilot test, Lock can be activated as a hologram and is called an AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) who is overseen by Professor Okonedo with the goal to learn more about policing and determine to what extent AI can be helpful in that arena. Kat, with 25 years of experience and a well-developed “gut” intuition, has her reservations as do the other members of her team, DI Rayan Hassan and DS Debbie Browne. They soon learn that Lock does have skills (e.g., speed of reviewing and analyzing social media contacts) to contribute despite its lack of emotional intelligence. The team is assigned to cover cold cases and they begin to look at the disappearance of two young men. The story does get a bit dark, but the characters are wonderful and I would happily read Callaghan’s next mystery, especially if Kat Frank is involved. Fans of police procedurals will be enthusiastic readers (and perhaps viewers as The Independent says, “With well-drawn characters, believable emotions and an interesting premise, you can see this becoming a TV series.”).