Out now from Vintage/Knopf!
The Verifiers is a literary murder mystery and an Asian immigrant family story about online dating, ideas of compatibility in the digital age, how tech companies use our data, model-minority expectations, Jane Austen, and one unusual detective agency. Also cycling in New York.
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, with far-reaching societal implications.
“This book is exhilaratingly well-written. I loved it so much that I didn’t want it to end.”
—Emily St. John Mandel, bestselling author of The Glass Hotel
“A clever and thought-provoking mystery laced with wit and insights about technology and relationships, who we are and who we pretend to be. Smart, twisty fun.”
—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown
“Suspenseful and hilarious, The Verifiers builds on the tropes of the whodunnit to bring us something entirely new. In quick-witted gumshoe Claudia Lin, Pek has created an irresistible heroine who must untangle her own family drama even as she investigates the malfeasance of warring online-dating platforms. This novel is a genre-defying joy!”
—Anna North, New York Times bestselling author of Outlawed
“The Verifiers is both witty and profound, at once a propulsive read and a meditation on our moment. Jane Pek delivers an intricate murder mystery, a portrait of fraught family dynamics, and an interrogation of algorithmic matchmaking. Claudia Lin is a memorable and magnetic protagonist, and this debut is riveting, a twinkle in its eye even as it takes on deep questions about how technology enhances and intrudes on our lives.”
—Helen Phillips, author of The Need