'The Verifiers' by Jane Pek
- Reed
- May 12
- 2 min read
Author: Jane Pek
Rating: B-
Vibe: A slow-burn mystery meets tech-world ethics with a clever lesbian sleuth at the center—more thoughtful than thrilling.
Quick Take: Smart and ambitious but slightly undercooked, The Verifiers offers a fresh lens on the detective genre without quite delivering the knockout twist it promises.
Claudia Lin is a mystery lover working a job she can’t tell her family about at a company that secretly investigates online daters. When a client winds up dead, Claudia decides to do what any good amateur sleuth would: investigate on her own, against her better judgment and against her employer’s rules.
There’s a lot to admire in Jane Pek’s debut. Claudia is a sharp, funny narrator—ambitious, self-aware, and stuck between wanting a life of her own and not knowing how to get there. I found that part deeply relatable. The book is less about solving a crime and more about figuring out who you are when your family doesn’t really know you—and when maybe you don’t either.
The subplot with her mother hit especially hard. Claudia is out to most people, but not her mom—and while this isn’t a book about coming out, it is about the quiet weight of selective silence. Pek handles Claudia’s queerness with care—never turning it into trauma porn or a footnote. It’s central to how Claudia moves through the world, particularly in her relationship with her family. That balance felt honest and important.
Where the novel falters is in momentum. The mystery takes too long to cohere, and by the time it does, the payoff isn’t quite worth the build-up. There are loose ends that don’t tie together in satisfying ways, and the central twist—while thematically on point—lacks surprise. It’s the kind of book that sets up something sharp but doesn’t quite deliver the sting.
As for the tech and surveillance themes, they’re timely, for sure—but the commentary didn’t feel especially new. We’ve seen the dangers of data manipulation and algorithmic matchmaking explored elsewhere, and Pek’s take, while well-intentioned, felt more like setup than critique.
Still, I’m glad this book exists. A queer Asian heroine in a noir-adjacent story that centers identity, ethics, and ambition? That’s worth celebrating—even if the pacing drags and the mystery fizzles.
