The verifiers : a novel
(Book)

Claudia Lin has a pretty excellent job. She works at Veracity, a detective agency that helps vet potential partners for clients pursuing romance via dating apps. Claudia is very much into literary mysteries--her go-to comfort reading is a murder-mystery series featuring one Inspector Yuan--as well as literature in general. Her astute, often acerbic observations prove a heady combination, contributing to Claudia's engaging voice: She keeps the narrative moving at a fast-paced clip. When a new client wants Veracity to investigate a recent online flirt who's ghosted said client--and when this request is followed in quick succession by another verification request--Claudia is all in, ably abetted by Finders Keepers, a proprietary app that can track people's whereabout through their cellphones. Meanwhile, in her personal life, Claudia has a stake in keeping her own secrets hidden from her more conventional immigrant family: Not only is she dead set against the type of Chinese husband her mom wishes for her, she also regularly measures herself against her much higher achieving brother and sister.