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

Product Information

Thrilling, thought-provoking and cinematic — a slam dunk for movie/TV adaptation' Alexandra Sokoloff, author of the Huntress Moon thrillers Jo Callaghan makes her entry into the crowded police procedural genre with a fresh take on the buddy-buddy cop trope. In the Blink of an Eye predicts the near future when police officers and their AI counterparts will work hand-in-holographic-hand. The human-AI interactions between the lead protagonists as they pursue their quarry are illuminating and, at times, hilarious. Provocative and compelling. A TV series seems a certainty’ VASEEM KHAN Crime fiction with a speculative twist, In the Blink of an Eye is an impressive debut from British author, Jo Callaghan. It’s phenomenal . . . Perfect blend of police procedural and techno thriller and kept me guessing right to the end!’ STEPH BROADRIBB

Pros: A solid 5 stars for creativity, dimensional and diverse characters, insightfulness regarding AI replicating humans (or should humans be replicating AI??), and a well-executed plot with cheeky humour peppered throughout. The kind of fresh and fearless debut I just adore. Wildly original, heartfelt, funny, and properly thrilling. Take a bow, Jo Callaghan' CHRIS WHITAKER This brilliant debut had me gripped the whole way through. A refreshing and different take on the police procedural genre’ Prima In the Blink of an Eye is fresh, innovative and very very clever. Flawlessly paced, plotted and researched, it’s laugh out loud, heart-achingly sad and doesn’t have a dull moment. I raced through it. Simply sensational' M. W. CRAVENI received this ARC from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review & I’m forever grateful.

The literary realm stands at a precipice. Ghostwritten books raise questions about the genuine origin of stories, challenging our notion of authenticity. Now, with AI’s nascent foray into creative writing, we’re presented with a conundrum: do we hold fast to the irreplaceable nuance of human touch, or do we venture into the unpredictable domain of machine-augmented storytelling? Idő kérdése volt, hogy a mesterséges intelligencia a krimiben is felüsse a fejét. Jo Callaghan történetében egy pilot projektet figyelhetünk meg, amelyben a rendőrök munkáját egy Okos Detektív Asszisztens segíti. Nem is az az ijesztő, hogy ez valakinek eszébe jut, hanem az, hogy ettől igazából annyira nem is állunk már messze. If, today, you ask an LLM to write prose, you’ll get something almost respectable. It is text generated by a statistical model of likely terms, so it skews towards banality. There has always been a variety of movie executive for whom the writer was the barrier to a decent story rather than the locus of its creation, and no doubt they believe this is the answer. Spoiler: it will take twice as long and cost twice as much to fix this stuff as it will to hire a pro in the first place. The pilot scheme will start with cold cases; people who have disappeared over the years, with no leads. The whole process of choosing which missing persons to concentrate on is complex in itself, and as time moves on, it becomes clear that there's far more to these cases than originally thought. Callaghan also uses the investigations to showcase the stark difference that can exist between humanity and intelligence. Between understanding human nature and a dogged pursuit of logic.

Table of Contents

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. Callaghan develops a solid mystery and I thought it played out well. There’s plenty of tension, enhanced by the anonymous perspective of a young man suffering at the hands of shadowy figures, and effective twists in the plot. I was brought up in a strict religious household, and it intrigues me that for the first time since the Enlightenment, science and religion are asking the same question: is consciousness obliged to materiality? Religion has always said no. Scientific materialism has said yes. And now? It’s getting interesting. To those of us who have been writing in collaboration with machines for many years – a motley and multigenerational community of bot programmers, computational linguists, hobbyist novel generators and poets of chance – the output of the most recent LLMs, of which GPT-4 is currently the most famous, is notable for its blandness. For years we have been freely sharing tools and their creations on the internet, developing codes of ethics and innovations in aesthetics, only to find an unimaginable monster landing in our midst. That monster is not artificial intelligence but profit. Profit-seeking use of literary machines necessitates sanding down every rough edge, felicity of error, eeriness of syntax and exposure of the inhuman that most interests their keenest human collaborators. The further such machines climb out of the uncanny valley, the duller they appear, because they have become familiar.

Fresh, innovative and very, very clever. Flawlessly paced, plotted and researched, it's laugh out loud, heart-achingly sad and doesn't have a dull moment. I raced through it. Simply sensational' M. W. Craven It’s phenomenal . . . Perfect blend of police procedural and techno thriller and kept me guessing right to the end!’ Steph Broadribb This story explores what it could be like for the police force to work with AI (artifical intelligence). I loved the thinking of this as lets face it, they are making cars that drive themselves so realistically, things like this could be a possibility at some point in the future.A standout debut with a unique and thrilling take on the detective novel. Engaging, exciting and superbly readable. I loved it’ SARAH HILARY What, then, is essentially human about the novel? My own answer has to do with the ways in which we unruly people rebel against forms, break them when they ask to be followed. It has to do with the ways people marry their own physical experiences of the world to texts that have been read for centuries and, in doing so, revise and alter them. I start there, but I’m still trying to figure out what it is that human beings bring to the work of writing a story. That feels like an important question, a question that should feel urgent to any person who loves to read. It’s a question that is made more urgent by LLMs. I’m grateful they exist to challenge us. This has to be a strong contender for crime debut of the year - sharp, perceptive writing and a brilliant new take on the detective duo' T. M. Logan The great era of the novel is over. You could say the same for film. Every last one of the top 10 grossing films last year were sequels or reboots. The Mill on the Floss of AI art hasn’t been written yet. The Wizard of Oz of AI art hasn’t been filmed yet. AI art is new. The formulas that strangle creativity don’t exist yet. AI art hasn’t been converted into a set of user-driven algorithms. There are no gatekeepers. There are no gates. The garden hasn’t been built yet. We are at the very beginning. The glimpses we see of its possibilities are just glimpses.