
Literary fiction
The Verifiers
We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Jane Pek, on your first book!
Get your first hardcover or audiobook for just $5.
Join now.We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Jane Pek, on your first book!
Family drama, dating app woes, and artificial intelligence, oh my! This witty debut novel has something for everyone.
Family drama
LGBTQ+ themes
Brainy
Tech world
Introducing a sharp-witted heroine for the 21st century: a new amateur sleuth exploring the landscape—both physical and virtual—of New York in a debut novel about love, technology, and murder.
Claudia Lin is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she's just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency.
A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she’s landed her ideal job. But when a client goes missing, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.
I can tell right away that Iris Lettriste isn’t like the others.
Everyone else walks into Veracity wearing some residue of embarrassment. Their gazes skitter about, their sentences are potholed with ums and wells. They overexplain. They worry that we’ll judge them, or they get preemptively angry because they assume we do.
Iris Lettriste. This woman sits down and tells us about the guy she wants us to verify like she’s ordering her first coffee of an arduous morning and it’s vital that the barista gets it right.
Not to mention: Who goes to a dating detective agency to check up on someone they were flirting with on Soulmate Messenger for all of sixteen days?
At my verifier interview, when Komla explained what Veracity did and I said, with maybe a tad too much enthusiasm, “Like a detective agency?”, he looked faintly perturbed—which, I’ve come to realize with Komla Atsina, possibly meant he was one wrist flick away from consigning my résumé to the shred pile.
That man is harder to read than Finnegans Wake. A detective agency might seem like an obvious parallel, he said, but he tried to dissuade clients from viewing Veracity as such. The verifiers didn’t solve crimes, and they didn’t intervene in the course of events beyond reporting their findings to their clients. Think of us, said Komla, as a personal investments advisory firm.
Jane Pek’s The Verifiers is so many books bundled together in one—office novel, family drama, literary thriller, mystery, romance—and like no reading experience I’ve had before. What begins as a book about the eerie technological intrusions into the dating world transforms into a murder mystery that kept me flipping eagerly through the pages.
Claudia Lin verifies identities for a living. Remember that person you dated who seemed a little too good to be true? Well, maybe they were—and Claudia’s the person who uncovers the truth. But when one of her clients, Iris Lettrise, dies unexpectedly, Claudia can’t leave the mystery of her death alone. Like you and me, she’s a huge reader, carrying in her head an encyclopedic knowledge of the Inspector Yuan mystery novels. Claudia relies on schemes lifted from these novels, often to her detriment, as the case stretches far beyond what she ever could have expected. Everyone in her life wants her to give up on the case. But she can’t.
As Claudia falls deeper into the mystery of Iris’s death—and the mystery of who Iris actually was—she risks losing her career and her friends and the life her mother envisioned for her all to learn the truth about the woman she barely knows and accept the truth about herself. Were her sacrifices worth it? You’ll have to add this book to your box to verify.
Kelly P.
Duluth, MN
Quirky mystery with unique characters who have depth and personaity. Couldn’t put it down! I appreciated the intelligent language; nice to read a mystery that’s not dumbed down for the modern reader.
Sarina C.
Fairfield, CA
A book that is one part murder mystery, one part 2nd-gen immigrant story, and one part critique of big data shouldn’t work — but it DOES! It helps that Claudia is so witty and relatable. Great read!
Devin R.
Philadelphia , PA
This was such a fun book to read! I’m a sucker for a female heroine, especially in a detective/mystery setting. It also paints an interesting picture of dating in the modern world and it’s future.
Lacy C.
Washington, DC
Picked this up on a whim, but it's one of my 2022 favorites. Brilliantly written, staggering twists, incisive commentary on privacy and relationships, and a relatable MC. Excited for Pek's next book!
Theresa S.
Gresham, OR
I enjoyed learning about dating apps and some of the nuances about those. I could definitely see how information entered into these sites could be used for not so good purposes. Loved main character