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

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Jo Callaghan is a British fiction author. In The Blink of An Eye is her crime debut and first UK published book. It is published by Simon & Schuster on 19 January 2023 and you can also find it on our catalogue. The award for the most original and innovative plot thread this year goes to Jo Callaghan, for her debut novel, In The Blink of An Eye. Everything I love in a police procedural but with an imaginative and fresh perspective. Clever and warm, it’s one of the best debuts I’ve read in years’ Jo Jakeman Policing requires hundreds of judgments to be made each day, often under conditions of extreme pressure and uncertainty: who and where to police, which cases and victims to prioritise, who to believe and which lines of inquiry to follow. As Malcolm Gladwell explains in Blink , these rapid decisions – often described as “hunches” – are informed by our individual social and emotional experiences, but also the prejudices we have all internalised from wider society, such as racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. This has to be a strong contender for crime debut of the year - sharp, perceptive writing and a brilliant new take on the detective duo' T. M. Logan

Walter Scott, that master of the 19th-century historical novel, wrote and revised and produced all his life, working industriously at novel after novel. Then towards the end of his life he had a series of debilitating strokes: he could, at the last, barely speak, and was almost unrecognisable as the man he had once been. And yet he kept writing. The very last few Waverley novels are fascinating: not “good” by conventional metrics, but recognisably Scott in a free-associative sort of way, and extraordinary works: as if Scott was a writing machine that just continued churning out stories even after his conscious mind had been disengaged. Crime fiction is full of detectives who have been paired up with someone they don’t like. Few have to get used to a bossy hologram, which is what happens in Jo Callaghan’s entertaining and thought-provoking novel . . . Callaghan grounds her novel in real life, challenging her unusual team to investigate the unsolved disappearances of two students. The moral dilemmas created by artificial intelligence are brilliantly explored in this altogether very human novel’ Sunday Times 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. The plot was so intriguing and the characters are very interesting, I do hope there is more to come with Kat.As a mum of two young people this was a frightening read in places and I think this was handled with sensitivity. This is is a non spoiler review so I’m not going to say too much about the conclusion other than I enjoyed the tension and the result. Kat’s just returning to work when we meet her. We soon learn she’d cared for her dying husband. I initially suspected he was a cop who died by some nefarious means, but it’s nothing like that. Less dramatic, if you like. But of course no less tragic. Everything you could hope for in a thriller: heartbreaking, intelligent, deftly plotted and so original' Fiona Cummins

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? This has to be a strong contender for crime debut of the year – sharp, perceptive writing and a brilliant new take on the detective duo’ T. M. LOGAN If, today, you ask an LLM to write prose, you’ll get something almost respectable. It is text generated by a statistical model of likely terms, so it skews towards banality. There has always been a variety of movie executive for whom the writer was the barrier to a decent story rather than the locus of its creation, and no doubt they believe this is the answer. Spoiler: it will take twice as long and cost twice as much to fix this stuff as it will to hire a pro in the first place. Thrilling, thought-provoking and cinematic — a slam dunk for movie/TV adaptation' Alexandra Sokoloff, author of the Huntress Moon thrillersAn ingenious police procedural with a clever twist, a delightful cast of characters paired with witty banter and relatable humour, intriguing cold case investigations - neatly sums this compelling and highly entertaining debut. I can’t wait to see what Jo Callaghan comes out with next.

I was immediately drawn into In The Blink of an Eye, Jo Callaghan’s debut book. I was intrigued by the premise, drawn in by the writing and strong characterisation. 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. Really interesting insight to the future of policing, I’m not adverse to it, the time it would save and speed up the process in apprehending people for their crimes!

If creativity is so vital to the human condition, then we must not allow ourselves to drift into a future shaped by what AI is capable of, leaving the role of humans to be defined by default. How do we, as humans, want to live our lives, and how can AI support us to achieve that? For millennia writers and philosophers and artists have grappled with the question of what it means to be human. It’s time to stop asking the question and instead start shaping the answer. It’s phenomenal . . . Perfect blend of police procedural and techno thriller and kept me guessing right to the end!’ Steph Broadribb She hasn't but I loved that Callaghan gives us a senior, experienced and confident protagonist and one who's a significant way through her career and life. Kat's likeable but has baggage. She's talented but also fallible. 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!

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. In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan will be published in Australia by Simon & Schuster on 10 January 2023.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