The Verifiers

After a bunch of work book-club duds, this one was actually enjoyable. Was it cliche and expected? Yes. Are there plot holes and unresolved plot lines? Yes. Is the plot, on the whole, unbelievable? Also yes. But I still found myself engaged in the mystery, and even though it's about a murder, it was such a light and easy read. The characters were charming, and there was self-awareness to the formulaic nature of the mystery, as if the author knew it was more like a silly cartoon than a gritty novel. I enjoy books with NYC as the setting now that I know all the neighborhoods, and I can appreciate a plot line that revolves around dating apps, as I have my own wealth of experience! (RIP) So overall, it was a fun read!

Firstly, I don't know even why I decided to request an arc of this book. I was just browsing the mysteries section of netgalley on a whim and was intrigued by the cover, and then the blurb. It felt like something unique and I just thought I'll give it a try. And now I can't believe I've read two locked room mysteries in consecutive days.

The writing in this one took me a while to get into. I don't know if it was the narrative voice or just the way the author described things, I couldn't focus much on it initially. But once I got introduced to the characters and a bit of the mystery, it was easy to get hooked. I don't know if this was supposed to be contemporary New York or near future because I couldn't get a hang of it. I also thought that the characters played fast and loose with the law and I guess it made for good convenience so that our characters could get to the root of the mystery. But don't think I'm being all negative - these are just things are observed but they didn't necessarily take away from my enjoyment of the story. The mystery itself is pretty intriguing and the author ensured that we couldn't guess the culprit or the motives till almost the end, and getting to see it all unfold was fun.

The other thing I really enjoyed about the book was how relevant it felt to our times. The major backdrop of the story is online dating as a concept, finding love in these times when we are almost pathological about showing only our best self in public and social media, the high dependency on algorithms by big tech companies which mine huge amounts of data that we inadvertently provide them, and how this affects the choices we ultimately make. There are quite a few interesting discussions but no solutions (because it's not that black and white) about how the algorithms might be used to subtly nudge us towards what choices to make based on what the companies want us to do, without us ever realizing that the decision we made might not be what we wanted, just what the algorithm thought we should want. Where to draw the line between convenience and infringement of privacy is a fraught issue with no clear cut solutions and I think the author captured the dichotomy of how big tech founders might come up ideas with good intentions but ultimately they all have to bow down to what the venture capitalists want because that's the kind of capitalist society we live in where profits are king, the customer be damned.

Claudia is an interesting young woman to follow. The only sibling among three who actually grew up in America, she wants to be filial to her mother but can't reconcile the woman who chose to keep her close while sending her brother and sister to live with her grandparents, with the mother who keeps putting her down with every chance she gets. But otherwise, she seemed like a bit of a loner who didn't have many friends, hasn't come out to her mom, but doesn't mind being single for now and work at a place which is both fun and interesting, even if the pay isn't great. She is also a huge mystery novels fan and ends up at the almost perfect job for her. I absolutely loved all the times she talked about her favorite fictional detective Inspector Yuan and his exploits in various cases, and how she could apply his methods in specific situations she encountered. It felt like something I would do if I was an mystery lover too and I had such an urge to look up if her favorite detective books actually exist.

I can't say I liked both her siblings, Charles and Caroline. They were supportive when needed but I didn't think it was unconditional, and each of them had their own problems which they kept bottled up, never confronting their mother. They mostly indulged her even when she was being negative towards them and misunderstanding their intentions, but I think however much we grow up in America, Asian children will mostly choose the path of least resistance, be filial and obedient. But it did seem like the siblings would be okay towards the end and maybe communicate more, so who knows.

Becks definitely felt like a mean girl initially and it's not surprising because she was quite rude to everyone and sometimes, I can't tolerate when a person is being a prick but with good intentions. Komla was a very guarded person who spoke in platitudes and seemed like a very typical tech startup guy. But he had his moments and I didn't know how to feel about him by the end of the book. Sarah and Iris were interesting too but I didn't feel like we got to know them much directly, just through second hand information.

Overall though, I rushed through the book because it was so easy to read. While it is a cool locked room mystery with many possible culprits that we'll keep guessing till the end, the author also balanced this with great character arcs, and some fascinating but subtle commentary on our data driven world. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I can only hope that our wannabe amateur sleuth gets to solve more mysteries in the future books.

True story: I bought The Verifiers by Jane Pek on a whim from an airport bookstore solely because of the front-cover blurb; any time Emily St. John Mandel tells me a book is “exhilaratingly well written”, well, I'm going to need it.

I knew from the singularly brilliant use of “potholed” as a verb on the very first page (“Their gazes skitter about, their sentences are potholed with ‘ums' and ‘wells'” -