Pek The Verifiers

A sharp debut novel about love, technology and murder
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-85730-921-1
Verlag: Verve Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 304 Seiten

Reihe: A Claudia Lin Mystery

** A finalist for the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ Crime Writing **
** Longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award **

Introducing Claudia Lin: a sharp-witted heroine for the 21st century.

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 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. Perfect for fans of Maggie Terry by Sarah Schulman, Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy and Rosalie Knecht's Vera Kelly series.

'Your go-to summer read... Really fun and will keep you hooked' - Emily Henry, author of Beach Read

'This book is exhilaratingly well-written. I loved it so much that I didn't want it to end' - Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

'Pek's engrossing debut novel gives us a thoroughly modern twist on classic detective fiction' - New York Times (Editors' Choice)

'This astute, page-turning debut sheds light on the necessities and limitations of interpersonal interaction, the role technology plays in its evolution (and de-evolution), and what it means to be human and looking for love in the 21st century' - BuzzFeed

'Clever, dryly funny... This is a fascinating, carefully layered mystery novel as well as a love letter to New York City and complicated families' - Washington Post

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pek, Jane

Leseproben

3

In matchmaker-speak, Charretter is a proactive, high-conversion, high-consistency, medium-activity user. He makes the first move, he reaches out to at least one profile per search, he maintains approximately the same level of activity over time, and he averages between three and six contacts a week. At any one time, he’s chatting on Soulmate Messenger with four or five women. The shortest chat record is less than a day, the longest almost two months.

His profile says he is thirty-five, works in advertising, grew up in the Chicago area, enjoys art museums and adventurous travel and whiskey bars. Assuming his pictures are accurate, he’s pleasant looking, if ever so slightly walleyed. He writes complete, well-crafted sentences. He’s looking for a woman to connect with on an intellectual, emotional, and physical level. His profile would get a Significantly Exceeds Expectations rating from all my straight female friends, who are always telling me how their standards have been worn down over time by the paucity of eligible men in New York.

Veracity has access to Charretter’s activity on Soulmate via Match Insights, a vendor that consolidates customer data across matchmakers and resells it to businesses in the industry. I’ve tried googling Match Insights: nada. Just like Veracity itself. There’s nothing on the Internet about the company, or even about Komla Atsina or Rebecca Rittel (Becks’s given name). Our clients have to take a vow of silence a Freemason would balk at, with one exception: they’re permitted to refer a total of three other romantically mistrustful individuals to us. These client referrals are the exclusive basis on which Veracity accepts new cases. In the verifiers’ line of work, Komla likes to say, discretion is the best part of everything. It all makes me feel delightfully like I’m a heroine in a spy novel, even if I know better than to say that out loud.

The irony of where I currently work is, I’ve never tried matching myself. I fessed up during the interview when Komla asked me how my experience with dating platforms had been. This was after his opening spiel about what he called our quest for love, how central it was to our conception of ourselves, what a hobbled process of trial and error it had been for millennia, until now! The promise of data and technology, the matchmakers knowing us better than we knew ourselves, reaching further into the world than we could reach ourselves, securing happiness for us.

‘Aha,’ he said. ‘You are a skeptic.’ He didn’t sound surprised, even though – as my friends like to remind me – 90 percent of our single, city-dwelling, midtwenties demographic is online. Hopefully it wasn’t because I was self-evidently undatable.

‘I believe it works,’ I said. It was certainly helping to usher in an era of matrimony among my friends. One of my freshman-year roommates had just announced her engagement to a guy she met on a matchmaker for pescatarian pickleball enthusiasts, possibly because there was no one else on that platform. I’d also been to two matchmaker-brokered weddings earlier this summer, one of them sponsored by Let’s Meet as part of a social media campaign. ‘It just feels like a bit too much trouble. For me. Right now.’

What I couldn’t say to the man who had just lauded matchmakers as the solution to humanity’s romantic woes: Matching feels sort of unromantic, no? The way e-cards do, and prenups, and gift certificates for presents, and my demographic’s obsession with recording and publicizing every single meal, sunset, vacation, and unoriginal thought of their lives. Sometimes I fear I may be out of joint with my time.

Komla said, ‘You have no desire, then, to be matching?’

I can usually tell, in interviews, which direction the questioner is pointing: How do you feel about working on tedious, repetitive tasks that are necessary for the success of your organization? But with Komla it was like I was standing in a bank of fog, barely able to make out his outline next to me.

‘Not particularly,’ I said.

‘Excellent,’ he said.

I extract Charretter’s chats with Iris from his Soulmate Messenger records and go through them thinking about what Iris said. Or rather, started to say – like he had an agenda – and then stopped herself. Maybe that was a ploy to tweak our interest, get us to say yes to the case. If so, it worked, and I’m definitely curious.

Halfway through my first reading, making notes in the margins as I go, I have an epiphany. This is Literary Analysis 101 all over again! Except now, in lieu of Pride and Prejudice or Anna Karenina or Othello, I’m teasing out meaning and intent from the arguably less inspired language of Charretter and Flora or Fauna. Looks like an English degree might have some practical use after all.

August 18

CHARRETTER: Saw you’re into contemporary art. Been to anything good lately?

FLORA OR FAUNA: I should confess something.

CHARRETTER: What?

FLORA OR FAUNA: I have no idea what ‘good’ is supposed to mean when we’re talking about contemporary art. So much of it just looks like self-indulgent BS to me.

[CL: Can’t disagree there!]

CHARRETTER: What about the artists you listed in your profile? Karsten Auer, George Bloom, Raquel Vega? What do you like about their work?

FLORA OR FAUNA: Honestly? They felt like artists I should say I’m into. To signal that, you know, I’m a Serious Art Person.

CHARRETTER: Is that what you want to be?

[CL: That’s quite a Serious Response to what is (imho) a joke by Iris.]

FLORA OR FAUNA: Ha, there are so many things I want to be. Getting a drink and having this conversation in person, for example. Are you free Friday?

August 19

CHARRETTER: Doesn’t work for me, sorry. But I’d like to keep chatting if that’s OK with you.

[CL: Why doesn’t he just suggest an alternative date? Shy, à la Max’s Caleb? Or he wants to get to know Iris better first before committing to a meetup?]

FLORA OR FAUNA: Of course!

CHARRETTER: You know what you were saying about art? There’s a show by an artist called Norah Simmons you should check out. It’s at Freshfield Galleries until the end of September. She’s similar to Auer and Bloom but more accessible. If you want to get a handle on what’s going on right now in the contemporary art scene, she’s a good place to start.

FLORA OR FAUNA: Thanks for the rec! I feel like I’ve been hogging the conversation. Tell me what’s going on with you. How was your day?

CHARRETTER: The usual. Work, gym. How about you?

[CL: Immediate switch of focus back to Iris. Maybe he’s just more comfortable talking about other people vs. himself. Or… something to hide? What if he’s not really in advertising, so can’t talk about it in any detail?]

FLORA OR FAUNA: Busy doing the bidding of the evil corporate empire.

CHARRETTER: What kind of law do you practice?

FLORA OR FAUNA: Murders and executions.

August 20

CHARRETTER: And how’s that going? Killed anyone lately?

FLORA OR FAUNA: I thought I scared you away. Have you heard that one before? Mergers and acquisitions. My sister loves to say murders and executions. She thinks it’s hilarious.

CHARRETTER: Do you enjoy what you do?

FLORA OR FAUNA: I enjoy how well paid it is. And lording the fact that I have a successful career over my sister. Just kidding.

[CL: Except not really…]

CHARRETTER: Have you thought about other careers?

FLORA OR FAUNA: Not really. Why?

CHARRETTER: Just curious. You seem like you might not be 100% happy with your job.

FLORA OR FAUNA: Who is? Are you?

CHARRETTER: Not 100%, true. The suits drive me crazy. A lot of times the clients, too, especially when they don’t know what the hell they want. But I run out there every day psyched about what I’m doing. Creating a brand. Designing a campaign. Making people feel the way you want them to. It doesn’t matter what they think, intellectually, or what they know they should do, what’s good for them, all of that. You have to grab their hearts. That’s always my approach. I try to grab their hearts. And when I do, it’s the biggest rush in the world.

[CL: OK, sounds like he probably is in advertising after all. This is the most he’s said about himself in the entire chat. Am I imagining it or does his voice seem different here?]

FLORA OR FAUNA: Sounds like falling in love.

[CL: Bold!]

CHARRETTER: I get the sense you don’t feel the same way about what you do.

[CL: And… subtext completely ignored.]

August 24

CHARRETTER: Meant to ask, did you check out the Norah Simmons show? What did you think?

FLORA OR FAUNA: Not yet. It’s on my list! Also the Whitney Biennial – I’ve been reading good reviews. Do you want to go this weekend?

CHARRETTER: I’m out of town, unfortunately. Let me know how it is.

FLORA OR FAUNA: Sometime next week would work as well.

CHARRETTER: Next week is going to be really busy for me. You should go ahead. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, though. Also the Simmons. Like I said, I think it will help with building an appreciation of...