Review of The Verifiers

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this one! What did I end up deciding? Check out my review of The Verifiers by Jane Pek.

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

To be published on February 22, 2022 by Vintage

Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review. This post contains affiliate links.

Synopsis: 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.

Review of The Verifiers by Jane Pek

I didn’t know much about this one but ended up really enjoying it.

What I liked about The Verifiers

Claudia, the main character, was great. She’s an amateur detective and lifelong mystery fan who was obsessed with books her mom used to read her before bed about a detective called Inspector Yuan.

She’s also a former English major and lifelong reader who is constantly referencing Chaucer, Auden, and Austen. Claudia works for a “dating detective agency,” a very niche, boutique PI firm that helps people investigate their online dates and matches.

The Verifiers is set in New York and the author is obviously someone who knows the city well. Claudia rides her bike everywhere and is hanging out all over the place, from Gowanus to the Upper East Side to Flushing.

The mystery was really well-crafted, and I suspect that, like Claudia, the author reads a lot of classic mysteries. To me, the Verifiers felt a lot like a modern day noir, like an updated version of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler or James Cain with a woman walking into a detective agency.

What wasn’t as much for me:

The Verifiers IS a book that focuses a lot on technology, stuff like apps and algorithms. I’m somewhat interested in things like that, but the last third of the book really got into the weeds of all the tech stuff. If you work in that world, or find the nitty gritty of algorithms and stuff fascinating, you’ll love the book. For me, it was too much.

If you’re looking for books like this, check out my blog post on Gen-X and Millennial detectives.