Human Remains + Jo Callaghan
In The Blink Of An Eye was one of my favourite books from the 2024 CWA Daggers, and though I thought the sequel Leave No Trace was weaker I still enjoyed it. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can say the same for this third book in the series.
Human Remains has many of the same problems as Leave No Trace, but they're even more visible here. In The Blink Of An Eye was that rare thriller that's predictable in a good way while still being able to surprise you. I remember thinking that Leave No Trace contained a more interesting, complicated case, but that it was lacking the surprises and twists that made the first book so compelling. Here the case is incredibly straightforward, and there's not really anything to get your teeth into. It also feels like the characters are in exactly the same place as the were in the first book. None of them have changed, none of them have really learned anything, and Kat and Lock continue to have the same arguments about human nature and the illogical things people do. It was perhaps interesting in the first book, but at this point it's tedious.
The main issue with the crime here is that Kat solves it effectively off-page. We spend the whole book in her head, but when she goes to make the arrest we see it through Ryan's eyes. We don't get any access to how she reached this conclusion, and while it's possible for the reader to have suspicions and to have reached the same conclusion, this is a police procedural. The whole point is the procedure, and we're robbed of it.
And let's talk about the Aston Strangler, shall we? We've been hearing about this past case of Kat’s and how it haunts her since the first book, and the ending of Leave No Trace promised us that we'd learn more about it in this book. And that promise is kept, but in a way that's honestly completely laughable. These books are increasingly full of cultural references that feel both strained and very outdated, and the reveal about how Kat identified the Strangler is directly linked to maybe the worst cultural reference in the books. The reveal of what happened should be dark and emotionally charged and it's clear that Callaghan thinks that it is, but unfortunately I found myself laughing aloud at it.
Then there's the ending here, which features the death of a character we've been growing close to over the three books and a revelation that takes us into new territory regarding Lock that has the potential to be interesting if done well. Unfortunately the whole thing feels incredibly contrived, and the death doesn't feel ‘earned’ in any way; it's the result of supposedly intelligent and competent characters making shit decisions because the author wanted to kill someone.
It's interesting to read this a year after the first two, when the cultural conversation around ‘AI’ has developed so dramatically. Callaghan flirts with exploring the implications of replacing jobs with AI but never really gets down in the dirt with it, which feels like a missed opportunity. And I can't help wondering if the “maybe AI is bad, actually” ending we have here feels so forced into the novel because it was a late addition to the book as that real-world conversation developed and Callaghan realised her protagonist no longer seems quite as cool as he may have done a year ago.
I didn't hate this, but it's a much weaker book than either of the others and I don't think I'll be continuing with this series if a fourth book materialises.