Human Remains (Kat And Lock Book Three) by Jo Callaghan

 

Human Remains (Kat And Lock Book Three) by Jo Callaghan.

Published 24th April 2025 by Simon and Schuster.

From the cover of the book:

The truth will always come out, but at what cost?

Fresh from successfully closing their first live case, the Future Policing Unit are called in to investigate when a headless, handless body is found on a Warwickshire farm. But as they work to identify the victim and their killer, the discovery of a second body begins to spark fears that The Aston Strangler is back. And as the stakes rise for the team, so do the tensions brewing within it.

When DCS Kat Frank is accused of putting the wrong man behind bars all those years ago, AIDE Lock – the world's first AI Detective – pursues the truth about what happened with relentless logic. But Kat is determined to keep the past buried, and when she becomes the target of a shadowy figure looking for revenge, Lock is torn between his evidence-based algorithms and the judgement of his partner, with explosive results. 

When everything hangs in the balance, it will all come down to just how much an AI machine can learn, and what happens when they do . . .

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The Future Policing Unit (FPU) is riding high following their success closing their first live case, proving that human detectives and cutting edge AI technology can work together to make a difference. Their chance to make further in-roads into traditional police work comes when DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock are called in to investigate human remains found on a river bank.

As they try to establish an identity for the headless corpse, ghosts from Kat's past complicate matters when a podcast suggests that the case that made Kat's name resulted in a the wrong man being convicted. When a second body is discovered, people begin questioning whether The Aston Strangler is still out there somewhere. With her reputation on the line, and her team under pressure, Kat and Lock are under intense scrutiny to show their unconventional partnership can produce results - not easy when Kat has become the target of a dangerous revenge plot, and she has secrets she is desperate to keep...

Human Remains is the third exciting outing for DCS Kat Frank and her brilliant, but problematic, 'partner' AIDE Lock. Fans of the series will know quite how much Jo Callaghan manages to create gripping cases for them to solve while delving into all the knotty issues about the shape of policing in the future, and this time around she pulls out all the stops to make this story more thought provoking than ever.

As before, Callaghan sets up the story with a beginning that hooks you straight into the police proceedings, when a headless body is found on a river bank bordering a rural farm. In short order, the FPU team are back in action, carrying you along on the twists and turns of a difficult investigation. The gang are all here, and up to their necks in walking the tight-rope of traditional vs cutting edge methods, and human instinct vs AI logic to solve crime, while negotiating the minefield of politics and public opinion - Kat, ambitious DI Hassan, Karen-from-comms (affectionately referred to as KFC), unconventional pathologist in Dr Judith Edwards, super-smart Professor Okonedo, and Okonedo's incredible invention AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock (an AI capable of Deep Learning). Even DS Browne, now on maternity leave, has a part to play in discovering the leads that can crack the case.

Intriguingly, the past has a big part to play in both the case, and the pressure Kat is under from having her professional judgment and integrity questioned through a meddlesome podcaster. I really enjoyed how Callaghan explores the impact of historical misdeeds, reputation, and social media as the threads weave together, cleverly using the deliciously tense twists to reveal the painful truth about Kat's involvement in the case of The Aston Strangler. I promise you will not see the shocking surprises coming...

What thrills me the most about this third cracker in the series though is the quite brilliant way Callaghan slowly introduces the seeds of unsettling developments in the relationships within the FPU team, causing you to questions exactly what you think you know about them and their agenda... but no spoilers from me!

An absolute page-turner of the highest order, I absorbed this in a single sitting, and cannot wait for book four!

Human Remains is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Jo Callaghan works full time as a senior strategist, carrying 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) and was longlisted for the Mslexia 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, which explores learning to live with loss and what it means to be human. She lives with her two children in the Midlands, where she spends far too much time tweeting as @JoCallaghanKat and is currently working on further novels in the series.