Jo Callaghan | In The Blink of an Eye
We are delighted to announce that Jo Callaghan In The Blink of an Eye has been shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.
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About the book:
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye. DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss.
A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat’s instincts come up against Lock’s logic. But when the two missing person’s cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.
AI versus human experience. Logic versus instinct. With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?
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.
About the author:
Jo Callaghan works fulltime as a senior strategist, where she has carried 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), was long listed for the Myslexia 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. Published to critical-acclaim, it was selected by Val McDermid for her New Blood panel of the best debuts of 2023 and for BBC Two’s Between the Covers Book Club. TV rights were sold in a major acquisition. The sequel, Leave No Trace was published in March 2024.
About the award:
The most prestigious award in crime fiction, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of The Year marks it’s twentieth year in 20234.
The award celebrates excellence, originality, and the very best in crime fiction from UK and Irish authors. A highlight in the literary calendar, past winners include Denise Mina, Steve Cavanagh, Val McDermid and Chris Brookmyre. Awarded annually as part of Harrogate International Festivals’ Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the winner of the most wanted accolade in crime fiction receives a cheque for £3000, and an engraved oak beer cask, hand-carved by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakstons Brewery.