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. 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. Kat and her team were all great characters with interesting and affecting backstories, and I loved Kat’s relationship with her son, Cam.

The narrative is immediately engaging, the characters, not just those of Kat and Lock but the others surrounding them, create a group that the reader wants to spend time with. It is also a study in love and grief as the reader sees Kat come to terms with the death of her husband, navigating life and issues without her best friend with her.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! This reads like it could be the beginning of a brand new series, and if so, I'm definitely up for it! I thought the AI premise was such a brilliant concept, feeling scarily plausible and highly effective.

It's so much more than a dystopian police procedural and asks questions about who we are and what it means to be human. Not only is it highly engrossing but readers are going to love Kat and Lock and the cases make for some hair raising reading! With well-drawn characters, believable emotions and an interesting premise, you can see this becoming a TV series.She is tasked with running a new pilot programme which pairs AI's with humans to solve cold cases of missing people. A rare crime novel truly as much about character as it is about plot…cried at the ending…huge potential series exploring the human AI connection. Lock is used to demonstrate the shortfalls of humans in general such as the fact we often make judgements based on emotions and personal experiences rather than evidence. All the hallmarks on traditional police procedurals are very much in play: trawling CCTV, social media, and devices, as well as good ole face-to-face interviews.

It may sound a little far-fetched, but when we look around our world today, there's certainly the possibility that this could happen . The plot cracks along and there are several interesting twists and turns before an unexpected and dramatic ending.But since one of my favourite shows on television at the moment is Quantum Leap - where, during a government experiment into time travel, a scientist finds himself "leaping" into the lives of different people, sorting out their problems and changing history in hopes of getting back home to the present - maybe I should revise the sci-fi standing. This wasn’t an entirely one sided narrative and the cases that were chosen were especially intriguing, made even more so by a few anonymous chapters, both worrying and distressing. Even though we both are averse to sci-fi, we absolutely love police procedurals and agreed that the sci-fi element in this book seemed more "realistic" and like a literary device, not just something concocted for pure entertainment purposes with no bearing on reality. In looking into the disappearance of two young men, Kat, Locke and the team stumble through awkwardness and frustration, each trying to assert their own perspective on the case. Although I solved the case very early, I still found myself engrossed in the story and blazing through it like Usain Bolt at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

She lives with her two children in the Midlands, where she is currently writing the second novel in the series. I am not certain there will be a sequel, but I really hope there will be, I really loved the relationship dynamics between Lock and Kat. Lock is the counter to Kat, he feeds are information, is able to analyse objectively and Kat can use that information to look at how it would be dealt with by fellow humans, softened or manipulated where necessary.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. Following eighteen months on leave for personal family reasons, DCS Kat Frank is given a new team, and assigned to work cold cases.