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

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She is tasked with running a new pilot programme which pairs AI's with humans to solve cold cases of missing people. During their meeting, McLeish informs her that he wants her to lead a pilot group working with AIDEs (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entities) to solve cold cases. In fact, I did check a couple of times to see if our lead, Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank had featured in previous outings. This is a wonderful read, and the speculative aspects do not feel so far fetched either when it comes to the use of AI and how useful it could be in the law enforcement field. Not only is it highly engrossing but readers are going to love Kat and Lock and the cases make for some hair raising reading!

She reluctantly accepts the role of lead in a pilot programme to work alongside an AI detective, known as AIDE Lock. My non technological brain fought against the very notion … however, the originality of the storyline, paired with brilliant writing, won me over. Kat is also a mother, with her teenage son on the cusp of relocating to begin university, and as such there are aspects of the cases that she strongly relates to. Fantastic character development, If you love a good police procedural, mystery with a bit of a twist in the dynamic of characters I really enjoyed this one.

He allows Kat to focus on her intuition, her instincts that are formed through years of experience and through human evolution. But since one of my favourite shows on television at the moment is Quantum Leap - where, during a government experiment into time travel, a scientist finds himself "leaping" into the lives of different people, sorting out their problems and changing history in hopes of getting back home to the present - maybe I should revise the sci-fi standing.

Lock proves to be a god send when it comes to data, accessing publicly available information and analysing it at incredible speeds no human could compete with, whilst the police conduct interviews. 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).

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. I thought the AI premise was such a brilliant concept, feeling scarily plausible and highly effective. Kat puts together a small team and with the assistance of Locke (who has no filters on his thoughts - LOL) they start to look into cold cases. 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.

Her boss, Chief Constable McLeish has her head up a pilot project working alongside an Artificial Intelligence Detecting Entity (AIDE) named Lock, who appears as a hologram, very much a character and personality in his own right, the brainchild of Warwick University's Professor Okonedo, a woman with her own agenda. A rare crime novel truly as much about character as it is about plot…cried at the ending…huge potential series exploring the human AI connection. 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.

Being honest, I normally run a mile from traditional science fiction but the combination of crime fiction and AI made this such a fascinating concept that I couldn’t resist. 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. Kat's grief for her husband and her guilt for her teenage son were raw and emotional and it was so clear that Jo was writing this story from her heart.

I work in cybersecurity and the industry is all about leveraging automation to replace tedious human tasks. I understand I can change my preference through my account settings or unsubscribe directly from any marketing communications at any time. I loved the AI-angle and it was so well executed, shining light on dilemmas with AI in a easy to grasp way where you saw the pitfalls at the same time as the potential for AI. 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?

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. In looking into the disappearance of two young men, Kat, Locke and the team stumble through awkwardness and frustration, each trying to assert their own perspective on the case. Kat and Lock's working partnership reads just like any other - both characters have their strengths, both characters are extremely likeable, they both bounce off each other and, at times, irritate the other. After twenty-five years on the force, Frank had thought she'd seen it all, but never in a million years did she think she'd be using a bunch of algorithms, which came from of a virtual presence, to solve crimes.