In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan

 Unique police procedural and crime thriller debut.

The first in a series, this book features DCS Kat Frank who has been asked to head up a pilot project at the Warwickshire Police that involves her and a select team pairing with an AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entities) unit to investigate cold cases. It will be an experiment to see the difference between human and machine approach to crime solving. Can they learn from each other? Kat and Lock (the name of this particular unit) begin with a series of missing person cases.

This was quite interesting and entertaining as it was different to most in this genre due to the fact that Kat's main partner is basically a "glorified Alexa" as she puts it. Although the machine can rapidly crunch all kinds of data in seconds, there is no feeling, intuition, or gut instinct involved in its decision making. As the duo and the other two team members, DI Hassan and DS Browne, as well as Professor Okonedo (the inventor) start looking into the disappearances of several young adults, it is quite rocky as they try to work out strengths and weaknesses in their approach.

I enjoyed the interplay between the characters and the evolution of the machine into becoming a part of the team. Acceptance of something new is challenging for them all, and there is also the fear of humans being replaced by AI always at the back of their minds. The particular plot and investigative part of this book was actually secondary to the whole artificial intelligence aspect but was satisfactory as far as a case. I understand there are already 2 more books in this series and I do intend to read them.

I was able to  listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. I enjoyed both narrators but wish the male voice had been used for the voice of Lock just to enhance the production quality.

Seems like a series that could easily be adapted for television as well. Definitely a lot of interest in AI right now with all of the surrounding controversy.

This is the first in a new series that should be read in order.

Tags - crime fiction, AI, missing persons