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

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Given everything, I had legit zero expectations reading this book, but I found myself gobbling this up like a Thanksgiving dinner. I thought I might struggle with this original AI concept but it did not seem implausible, and I wasn’t bamboozled by any major technical gobbledegook. There’s such a thought-provoking consideration of morality threaded through as the catalyst for the narrative so that even when In the Blink of an Eye is finished, it resonates and unsettles the reader. This wasn’t an entirely one sided narrative and the cases that were chosen were especially intriguing, made even more so by a few anonymous chapters, both worrying and distressing. Her boss put her in charge of a pilot program, working with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) She is skeptical and is determined that the pilot will fail.

Lock was a brilliant character in its own right and produced moments of humour with its honest and unfiltered comments and I actually became quite fond of it, (I had to remember to think of Lock as an ‘it’ and not a ‘him’ – not least because of its default hologram setting being a 6ft tall male). 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. He allows Kat to focus on her intuition, her instincts that are formed through years of experience and through human evolution.Unexpectedly the investigation’s into the current whereabouts of university student Tyrone Walters and wanna be actor Will Robinson converge when the team discovers a sinister link in their disappearances.

But, there’s a catch – she’s also to be partnered with AIDE Locke – an Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entity a. The reader is pulled along with the narrative, eager for Kat and her team to find the clues, ones which are left by the author for the reader to find and follow before the detectives get there. I really enjoyed this pairing of detective and machine and it was fascinating to see the interactions and development of the partnership with Kat’s gut feelings and emotional responses often in contradiction with Lock’s cold hard logic.

The pair show that the perfect detective is a fine balance of precision and compassion, of fact and intuition. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE Lock – an AI detective – Kat’s instincts collide against Lock’s logic.

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. 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. A really clever twist on the police procedural that asks big questions about instinct, bias, and what it means to be human while also delivering a cracker of a plot. It is also a study in love and grief as the reader sees Kat come to terms with the death of her husband, navigating life and issues without her best friend with her.Kat's team includes DI Rayan Hassan, a confident, self assured officer who insists on constantly challenging Kat's decisions, and the more diffident and apologetic DS Debbie Browne, facing her own personal issues.