THE VERIFIERS
By Jane Pek
Whether the digital takeover of our lives is a blessing or a fatal curse is up for debate, but it sure is a boon for crime writers. In Jane Pek’s debut ‘The Verifiers’, the worlds of social media, big tech, and internet connectivity provide fertile new ground for people to cheat, cheat, and potentially kill each other.
Claudia Lin, the narrator and protagonist, is young, Asian, schooly, queer, native of Queens and a bit of a wimp. After giving up the fast-paced financial job that her successful brother arranges, Claudia signs up to play a detective of sorts at a shady start-up called Veracity, which verifies the identities and stories of users on dating apps. The job essentially involves cyberstalking people online and stalking them regularly the rest of the time. Claudia is not suited for her new position: she is a bit of a luddite, has never used a dating site herself or even had much to do with the digital world. Her main qualification is her dedication to detective fiction. This lifelong preparation leads to both revelation and disaster when Iris Lettriste, a mysterious client, hires Veracity to investigate two suitors, one of whom she never met. Veracity’s bread-and-butter is getaway liars – cheating husbands, fabulists faking their jobs or ages, gamers juggling apps and profiles. But Claudia senses that something else is going on with Iris, and when she goes missing from both the real and digital worlds, dumps Veracity (and her account) and deletes all her profiles, it pulls Claudia into an adventure that will leave her fictional hero, inspector, worthy. Yuan. Was Iris a suicide? Or was she murdered? Was she Iris at all – or her own sister? Was she a depressed, destitute, and heartbroken journalism high school dropout, or a daring investigative journalist about to blow the lid on the dating industry?
Those parts of the novel devoted to Claudia’s personal life are well rendered and charming, but not particularly fresh. Her hypercritical immigrant mother, super-ambitious or stunning siblings, lovable loser/wannabe artist friends, and nerdy, smart party mates and connections are likeable and all too recognizable — but not exactly bigger than life. The book jumps into a higher, wilder gear when the odd, less predictable, and potentially malevolent characters arrive, especially the glamorous Becks Rittel, the “Blonde Assassin,” who has a knack for uttering deadpan, socially unacceptable comments, and who erotic accusation Claudia that the reader can not miss, even if Claudia herself seems oblivious. Also compelling is Claudia’s inscrutable boss, Komla Atsina, a smooth Ghanaian tech wizard whose soft, elegant, highly controlled demeanor makes him equally believable as an undercover hero or evil mastermind.
“The Verifiers” offers the noir tropics Claudia loves (enigmatic client, amateur detective, lots of red herring), but with a decidedly 21st century twist. And the central mystery, at least for this reader, is original and intriguing. The question of whether the people we encounter online are who they say they are is a really troubling one. Are they cheaters, cheaters, psychopaths – or something even stranger and scarier? What if they aren’t humans at all, but bots, or as Pek calls them, “synths,” made to trick and control us? Do we surrender to algorithms that know us better than we know ourselves? Are we exchanging our freedom of choice, thought, even desire, for convenience and fantasy? Are we no longer able to tell, or even care, what is real? In investigating these issues, “The Verifiers” leads us deeper and deeper into a maze with no obvious exit. Except of course to uninstall our apps and stop searching for truth and happiness online. But we never will. Shall we?