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 . . .
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, where she spends far too much time tweeting as @JoCallaghanKat and is currently working on further novels in the series.
My thoughts: This series just gets better and better with each book, giving both a cracking read and plenty to think about.
Kat’s in the spotlight as an anonymous podcaster is determined to prove the conviction of The Aston Strangler, a man Kat arrested, was wrong and that Kat make mistakes and manipulated evidence.
With the remains of a young woman found on a local farm, and Lock’s involvement in the autopsy being questioned, could Kat lose her job or will her accuser go too far in their desire for the truth?
The title and the plot ask timely questions about the role of AI, Lock cannot understand why humans behave the way they do, there’s often little or no logic to their actions, he doesn’t understand human emotions.
His actions are also being called into question, the fact he can only really follow instructions to their logical conclusion and can’t deviate or use his own intuition leads to devastating consequences for the team, but is it his fault?
Their victim only came to be on the farm in the first place, following clues to try to find out what happened to her grandfather, who was a POW there but never returned home. Actions have consequences, even decades later, which will destroy two families. Lock can’t really understand the whys of this either, he’s a bit like Spock from Star Trek in that sense, none of the things anyone in this does seem logical, because humans aren’t logical. We act on instinct, emotions, our gut, all sorts of things you can’t define to AI. Even the doctor who designed him is starting to question whether she’s right, and she used to be sure she was.
A truly thought provoking, intelligent read that throws up plenty to chew over once it’s finished.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 