Might as well hang this out there, even if it's something less than two books. Who knows if another post will materialize before the end of the year.
Asako Yusuki. Butter. 2017. USA: HarperCollins, tr. 2024.
More than one pundit has included Butter on a list of best mystery books of the year. You'd think that implies a strong hook to grab you from page one, whereas for the entire first chapter I felt jerked every which way, from a strange prisoner and curious hints of serial killing to the merits of friendship and acceptable solo lifestyles. I barely established this was a day in the brain of a journalist person called Rika. It's Japan, and it's quite foreign—people's names, their urban locations, what they eat, and what they wear—where they work, not so much. Ploughing ahead with misgivings, I learned that Rika wants to interview imprisoned Kajii, a woman convicted for killing three men that loved her. For Rika it would be a major scoop in the weekly magazine she works for. Kajii—a controversial media celebrity by now—famously refuses female interviewers, but Rika gains an invitation after studying Kajii's now-deleted food blog. Butter, currently in short supply, is Kajii's magic that transforms every recipe.
After three chapters, this book is not for me. Personally, I do love butter, but not page after page of it glistening wetly, melting in full milky aroma, bombing the taste buds, flavour exploding like a wave of kindness into one's bloodstream. Like that. Of course, butter is always combined with some other food such as rice which I can visualize, but try picturing osechi, nishime, hizunumasu, nanakusagayse, kuromame, kamo seiro, amazaki, kiritampo, and the like.
▪ It was a taste that could only be described as golden. A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavor and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice and washed Rika's body far away. (33)
▪ The hot butter fused the sugar and soya sauce together, clinging to the sweet, soft, shapeless mass in her mouth, swimming around its outside as though to ascertain its contours. By the time she'd finished chewing, the roots of her teeth were trembling pleasurably. (75)
Assuming that eating butter, and/or forging an alliance with Kajii, will wreak changes in Rika, are not sufficiently interesting to me; I'm not captured either prose-wise or theme-wise. The author has connected with an appropriate, appreciative audience and so we all move on.
Jo Callaghan. In the Blink of an Eye. USA: Random House, 2023.
Another of my list arrives, yay TPL. DCS Kat Frank of Warwickshire Police returns to work after a long hiatus caring for her husband John who eventually died. Her boss CC McLeish has just the right position for her: piloting an important project to apply (and test the merits of) AI on a cold case her team will choose. Professor Okonedo, the scientist spearheading the AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entities) component called Lock, is clearly dismissive of police detective work. Kat, on the other hand, is highly suspicious of machine analysis that ignores the human factor. When she and her team—DI Rayan Hassan and DS Debbie Browne—meet Lock (who can materialize as a hologram) it's great entertainment as they review cold cases. Lock's strength is crunching data at incredible speed, saving countless hours, days, weeks(!) of police work.
Two fairly recent missing persons files are chosen: Will Robinson, ambitious young actor from a well-to-do home, and Tyrone Walters, a black teenager just starting university. Coincidentally, Kat's son Cam is the same age as these two—you are right to feel a shiver of apprehension. While Hassan and Browne pair up, Kat partners with Lock who exists in a powerful computer on her wrist during regular police procedures. Does it sound crazy? Trust me, it works; their interaction is a learning process for both, their sparring often hilarious—especially when she has to curb Lock's blunt evaluations at inappropriate times. Of course Lock's algorithms are oblivious to human emotions. But he does help determine that the same kidnapper took both the young men, besides adding a few more similar missing persons. A desperate race to save the most recent youngster crashes into one unexpected turn after another.
This exceptional novel has everything going for it—refreshing characters and plot, a hot technology issue (AI), credible medical science, and fully fraught with jolting suspense. And it is a beautifully structured first novel for Callaghan. An author to watch for!
Bits
▪ "Lock's conversational abilities are beyond anything so far achieved in AI, but it still has much to learn from real-time human interactions. It has been programmed to speak truth to power and at the moment it has no filter." (26)
▪ "Lock, I am your DCS, and I don't need to justify my decisions to you. If you don't like it, I can leave you in the car or in the cloud or wherever you exist." (50-1)
▪ "Are you saying I should have lied? My anti-corruption software prevents me from lying." (136)
▪ Kat told him how Lock's relentless focus on facts had potentially demotivated her team on their first day and how it had upset Mrs Robinson by telling her that her son was, in all probability, dead. (149)
▪ "You don't need me to tell you that the police force is institutionally racist and misogynistic." (175)
▪ "A total fucking invasion of my privacy? A stalker's diary? An illegal surveillance operation of a senior officer?" She was swearing at her boss, but she didn't care. (260)
▪ Where are you? she texted. What time will you be back? (269)
▪ Kat took a deep breath. Jesus. A bloody machine had more faith in her than her own boss and team. (292)
▪ "If anyone finds out that I or Lock have breached any of the international standards on AI, or if McLeish makes a complaint, than I could lose my professorship and even my lab." (294)
▪ "The worst thing is telling a patient they have cancer, knowing there is something that could help them but not being able to offer it." (306)
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