In The Blink of An Eye: A BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick

Product Information

I was hooked from the first 10 pages, you are thrown into a wild ride that you can’t get off until you’ve finished the book. Feels like it could be the start of a series and I hope it is, I'd definitely be interested in more. I met Jo at Capital Crime in London in September 2022 and was lucky enough to get a proof of her new book In The Blink of An Eye which has had some absolutely RAVE reviews and the word on the street is that this book is going to be HUGE. who knows maybe Mark Zuckerberg has a whole fleet of AI detectives scouring the internet for anti-metaverse individuals LOL.

Although I solved the case very early, I still found myself engrossed in the story and blazing through it like Usain Bolt at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Whilst Lock is, undoubtedly, a genius and can provide essential information in seconds, they do lack empathy, social niceties and don't have that gut instinct that humans, and especially well experienced police officers, have. Have just finished reading the acknowledgements, not something that I do very often in books and I’m in tears. With input from her small handpicked team, consisting of DI Ryan Hassan and DS Debbie Browne, along with AIDE Lock, who presents as a lifelike hologram with the default appearance is as a fairly nondescript 6ft tall white male, and Professor Okonedo as an observer, Kat selects two missing person cold cases for them to review.Essentially In the Blink of an Eye is a police procedural, Kat and her squad conduct interviews, investigate clues and gather evidence to explain the fate of the missing men. 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.

Now I don't normally listen to the hype but the premise of the book sounded very intriguing; an Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity teaming up with a seasoned DCS to review cold cases sounds like science fiction but I've been to see ABBA Voyage 3 times in the past few months and seen how technology is evolving so in my mind "anything is possible". For decades we’ve had people who believe their favourite TV/movie/book/video game character is real, and fail to distinguish the actor from the character – how will these people react to AI when it looks and acts so lifelike? 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. In fact, I did check a couple of times to see if our lead, Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank had featured in previous outings.In The Blink of An Eye explores the potential future of technology with an in-depth, unforgettable look at grief and humanity, and how surprisingly, one can aide the other. How to be empathetic when necessary – there are emotions and reactions that Lock needs to learn to be a complete success. Számomra ugyan elég kiszámítható volt, hogy mikor milyen irányt fog venni a történet, de ettől függetlenül nagyon élveztem, és végig erősen szurkoltam Katnek és Locknak, hogy az ügy végére járjanak.

I estimate In the Blink of an Eye is set in roughly five years time, give or take, so aside from the presence of Locke there’s little futuristic technical advancements to get your head around, and everything relating to AIDE was dumbed down to my level of almost zero knowledge. Sorry to go all philosophical on you guys, but good on the author for tackling such a controversial, moral, and ethical issue, and incorporating it into a police environment in the novel way that she did.Professor Okonedo, determined to better the operation of the force, asserts that the AIDE is not only capable of collating and analysing vast amounts of data in a fraction of the time required by a human, but has been programmed to filter out the bias and prejudice that can taint investigations. But you can't deny that the speed at which AI can learn and spit out info is a huge value to humans, especially law enforcement. The pair show that the perfect detective is a fine balance of precision and compassion, of fact and intuition. 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. It staggers me that this is a debut, the author has such a talent for writing and I’m so sorry for your loss.