#the verifiers

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Books I Read in 2025: The Verifiers by Jane Pek

You know what a cozy mystery looks like. The cover shows a cat (sometimes a dog) sitting in a bookstore, café, bed and breakfast, antiques store, or craft shop.

The titles are often puns: The Crepes of Wrath (Tamar Myers), Embroidered Truths (Monica Ferris), Murder by Mocha (Cleo Coyle).

I don't like cozies but many readers love them because they are light on violence and rich in detail with amateur sleuths and colorful characters in small towns, a light tone despite a murder to be solved (and justice served), and sometimes recipes or craft patterns.

In the past year, we've seen a new batch of cozies that look a little different, but don't judge a book by its cover! These new cozies hit all the right feels but add a bit of diversity, too.

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

Recruited by an online-dating detective agency in New York, Claudia violates agency policy to investigate a client's disappearance and finds much more than she bargained for.

Meanwhile, in her personal life, Claudia is quietly rebelling against her mother's dreams for her as a traditional Chinese wife.

Under Lock and Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian

Tempest Raj returns home when her Las Vegas magic show is shut down after an unfortunate accident. While visiting her dad's latest renovation project (he designs and builds hidden rooms and secret staircases), she discovers the body of her former stage double.

Has the Raj family curse finally come for Tempest? A locked (hidden) door mystery, loaded with mouth-watering descriptions of plant-based meals, plus recipes.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

When her father is found dead in his office, Nell finds a worthless map that sparked the destruction of their relationship years ago.

Why did he keep it in a special place? Nell's determination to find out leads her to question her father's death and reveals a magical mystery behind the seemingly-worthless roadmap.

There’s a family joke regarding me and my cousin. We didn’t live in the same state and when we did get a chance to spend time together, usually at our grandparents, usually at the tail end of summer, our idea of quality time was reading different books next to each other. All the adults thought it was perplexing/hilarious. We never saw each other and now we were too into our respective books to even interact? What I remember, what they didn’t see, were the moments when we’d pause and read a humorous passage out loud, share a moment of mutual appreciation for the author’s wit or clever turn of phrase. These days, when I run across a passage in my current book that I’m pretty sure she’ll find amusing, I text her a picture. She responds accordingly. And I still feel like we are sharing an experience. So when I read The Verifiers and came across multiple quotable moments to text her, I knew I had stumbled onto a good read.

For example:

The best I can do is slouch in a corner rereading The Bostonians on my phone so I won’t start telling various member of my family to just shut up already. Henry James is about the only author I can bear right now. I could do with some eloquent introspection and regret, and he’s safely ensconced in the pre-Internet age. Also, his female protagonists’ subpar decision-making skills are really resonating with me. (208)

But let’s talk about the book.

Claudia Lin is in her mid-twenties, lives in New York City, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and works for a referral-only dating website verifying service. When a client dies under potentially mysterious circumstance, Claudia becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth, despite pushback from the two other senior members of her company. Having grown up on a steady diet of mysteries, she takes her cues from what her favorite (fictional) Inspector Yuan might do. Sometimes this leads to uncovering a clue. And sometimes she’s confronted with untangling very human, rather than fictional, motivations. In the meantime, Claudia is also dealing with complicated relationships with both her mother and her two older siblings. Pek manages to compact a lot into one novel without weighing it down, including the second-generation immigrant experience, the increasing influence technology has on our lives, especially in the matching industry, the shocking amount of data gathered by such technology, and the human tendency to deceive, even benignly. I’ve largely stopped trying to unravel the “whodunnit” in mysteries, content to be taken along for the ride, and truly enjoyed getting to know Claudia as a multi-faced character. I suspect Jane Pek isn’t done with Claudia Lin, so I’m looking forward to wherever she takes her next!