One of my favourite parts of helping look after the Tea Leaves and Reads bookshop on a Tuesday night (apart from the lovely customers that pop in), is browsing all the shelves and seeing all the new books that arrive. Last Tuesday, after spending some time browsing, I came across this book on the new arrivals table. Certainly not a genre I would usually reach for, but the description and the cover grabbed me, so I thought I would give it a go. It did not disappoint.
Although part of a series, this book can certainly be read as a standalone – I hadn’t read either of the previous two books in the series (The Blink of an Eye and Leave No Trace) and I don’t feel I missed anything, except maybe some relationship building.
What I loved most about this book, and one of the reasons I picked it up to read, was the use of AI, which was seen through a newly developed hologram – AI Detective Lock. The author has done a great job with their research and highlighted how this new technology could be used in the future. By the end of the book, I definitely changed my mind on how cool this concept of AI being used more regularly in the world would be though….
The book had some really good twists, especially towards the end, and fascinating characters that I would love to read more about. I genuinely laughed out loud whilst reading, there was some great humour mixed in with the death and suspicious characters, which helps to lighten the tension.
This book is perfect for readers who love a bit of a ‘whodunnit’. It’s not too grizzly, though a little descriptive at times, and the characters are all relatable (except Lock, unless you are AI….)!
About the Book
DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock are back in a cutting-edge new thriller.
The truth will always come out, but at what cost?
Fresh from successfully closing their first live case, the Future Policing Unit are called in to investigate when a headless, handless body is found on a Warwickshire farm. But as they work to identify the victim and their killer, the discovery of a second body begins to spark fears that The Aston Strangler is back. And as the stakes rise for the team, so do the tensions brewing within it.
When DCS Kat Frank is accused of putting the wrong man behind bars all those years ago, AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI Detective – pursues the truth about what happened with relentless logic. But Kat is determined to keep the past buried, and when she becomes the target of a shadowy figure looking for revenge, Lock is torn between his evidence-based algorithms and the judgement of his partner, with explosive results.
When everything hangs in the balance, it will all come down to just how much an AI machine can learn, and what happens when they do . .
About The Author
Jo Callaghan works full time as a senior strategist, carrying out research into the future impact of AI and genomics on the workforce. She was a student of the Writers’ Academy Course (Penguin Random House) and was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Writing Competition and Bath Novel Competition. After losing her husband to cancer in 2019 when she was just forty-nine, she started writing In the Blink of an Eye, her debut crime novel, which explores learning to live with loss and what it means to be human. She lives with her two children in the Midlands.
Purchase the Book
This book can be purchased in our store either on its own or in a cosy Book Box.
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