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

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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 Jo works full-time as a senior strategist, where she has carried out research into the future impact of AI and genomics on the workforce. After losing her husband to cancer in 2019, she started writing In The Blink of An Eye. She lives with her two children in the Midlands, where she is currently writing the second novel in the series. Thrilling, thought-provoking and cinematic — a slam dunk for movie/TV adaptation' Alexandra Sokoloff, author of the Huntress Moon thrillers Daring and original, heartbreaking and heart-stopping, this study of what it means to be human is destined to not only be a big success, but a classic crime novel of our times. Loved it’ Caz Frear 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.

As a fiction writer, I know we should avoid apocalyptic thinking. The way we live is not a law, like gravity; it is propositional. We make it up as we go along. We can change the story because we are the story. This is freedom. It is also responsibility. What story shall we tell about who humans are? Warlike, violent, dishonest, wasteful? That’s part of us, certainly. It’s not the whole story – and I don’t want it to be the story that ends life on Earth. The last thing I am worrying about right now is whether AI will write better fiction than humans. I don’t care. 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. I adored Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, as she was so smart, yet couldn’t stop talking (I was always getting told off for talking too much) and of course, she wanted to be a writer. On TV, I loved Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman – anything that had super strong women who saved the day!

Now I don't normally listen to the hype but the premise of the book sounded very intriguing; an Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity teaming up with a seasoned DCS to review cold cases sounds like science fiction but I've been to see ABBA Voyage 3 times in the past few months and seen how technology is evolving so in my mind "anything is possible".

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? Imagine a future where those who are most adept at getting AI to write creatively will dominate, while we writers who spend a lifetime devoted to our craft are sidelined. OK, this is a worst‑case scenario, but we have to consider it, because ChatGPT and the other Large Language Models (LLMs) out there have been programmed to imagine a future that threatens many creative professions. ChatGPT is already responding to the questions I ask it in seconds, quite reliably. It is an impressive beast, but one that needs to be tamed. We cannot afford to ignore it.With its clever, provocative premise and appealing, complex characters, In the Blink of an Eye is a compelling novel, and I believe only the first of what promises to be a great series. The introduction of AI into policing is an interesting concept and Callaghan offers both sides – seen through the characters’ lenses but with balance. Kat and her boss are cynical about politicians’ intention to cut resources / officers and replace them with technology not capable of nuance and intuition. Whereas the technology’s creator is distrustful of police for those very ‘human’ reasons. Faster, fairer, evidence-based decisions for a fraction of the cost certainly sounds attractive, but early research suggests the need for caution. So called “predictive policing” uses historical information to identify possible future perpetrators and victims, but studies have shown that the source data for this kind of modelling can be riddled with preconceptions, generating, for example, results that categorise people of colour as disproportionately “dangerous” or “lawless”. A 2016 Rand Corporation study concluded that Chicago’s “heat map” of anticipated violent crime failed to reduce gun violence, but led to more arrests in low-income and racially diverse neighbourhoods. It’s phenomenal . . . Perfect blend of police procedural and techno thriller and kept me guessing right to the end!’ Steph Broadribb Also: if ChatGPT is not as clever as we think it is, then it could be done for plagiarism by thousands of irate authors or by itself. But I expect it has thought of that.

The characters already are well established and you know exactly who they are and what they’re about which I liked. I would love to work with AI on a piece of fiction. We could share the royalties, and the AI money could fund more women to get involved in AI research and application. The real problem is not that AI is writing, or will write, or can write. The problem is who is writing the AI programs and designing the algorithms. Who is setting the terms of the research? Who is deciding what matters? Mainly men. That’s a problem because the world is not made up of mainly men. 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.It's so much more than a dystopian police procedural and asks questions about who we are and what it means to be human. Brilliant' Nikki Smith Thank you Simon & Schuster UK for a digital copy of this debut novel to read and review. I loved the synopsis and early reviewers thoughts suggested this was a book not to be missed. So would I agree.

In the Blink of an Eye is a dazzling debut from an exciting new voice and asks us what we think it means to be human. The question of whether and how well programs like ChatGPT can (or will) write novels is most interesting, to me, in that it leads to questions about what a novel should be. Jo Callaghan is a strategist specialising in the future of work, and author of debut crime novel In the Blink of an Eye, published by Simon & Schuster. Further reading In your thank you section at the end of the book you list some of the people who helped your research with the technical data. There must have been some interesting discussions about the possibilities of using AI in police work that seem like Science fiction now? I received this ARC from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review & I’m forever grateful.

It's so much more than a dystopian police procedural and asks questions about who we are and what it means to be human. Brilliant' NIKKI SMITH