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by Jane Pek
Introducing Claudia Lin: a sharp-witted amateur sleuth for the 21st century. This debut novel follows Claudia as she verifies people's online lives, and lies, for a dating detective agency in New York City. Until a client with an unusual request goes missing...
Claudia 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 vanishes, 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.
"Pek's thoughtful, well-constructed debut introduces irrepressible Claudia Lin, who has recently been hired by Veracity, a low-profile, referrals-only company that checks information for mistrustful clients who want to know whether the people they meet on online dating sites are telling the truth...This nuanced novel will leave readers eagerly awaiting Pek's next book." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A cool, cerebral, and very funny novel...beautifully complemented by entertaining secondary characters...Claudia is the seductive protagonist in a tale that delves into the dark heart of contemporary technology, not to mention the foibles of the human heart. With an inquisitive, clever, and curious narrator, this adventurous mystery is both scary and hilarious." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"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
This information about The Verifiers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jane Pek was born and grew up in Singapore. She holds a BA from Yale University, a JD from the New York University School of Law, and an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. Her short fiction has appeared in the Brooklyn Review, Witness, Conjunctions, Literary Hub, and twice in The Best American Short Stories. She currently lives in New York, where she works as a lawyer at a global investment company.
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