Fans of Jane Pek’s 2022 debut, The Verifiers, starring irrepressible, clever, bike-riding Brooklynite Claudia Lin, will be delighted to learn of Claudia’s return in The Rivals.
While she’s still reeling from the dramatic events—including murder, alas—depicted in The Verifiers, Claudia’s also proud to be a new partner in Veracity, a Tribeca-based private investigation agency that discerns whether clients’ prospective partners are being truthful on dating apps. But Claudia’s also nervous about her new role, thanks to her ongoing internal conflict about the ethics of Veracity’s work (are they background-checking, or stalking and hacking?) and her conviction that, despite her hard-won career advancement, her mother will nonetheless stick to her favorite “look at my lousy Chinese daughter topic of conversation.”
There’s the matter of her own love life, too: Sure, she’ll dutifully tail Amalia, the intelligent and gorgeous date of obnoxious new client Mason Perry (“His opinion of himself is so high, you can see it from outer space.”), but things get complicated when Claudia accidentally-on-purpose befriends her and starts wishing Amalia were her girlfriend instead. She’s also attracted to her mercurial co-worker Becks, but Claudia’s not sure if her feelings are reciprocated. Pek does an excellent job exploring the particular humor and suspense inherent in the mysteries of the human heart.
The author also delves into the gritty mysteries of the tech world as Veracity discovers a corporate conspiracy centered around dating apps, complete with manipulation via AI and the untimely demise of anyone who raises suspicions about the apps’ overlords. Even worse, Claudia’s brother, Charles, works for one of the “Big Three” matchmaking platforms, and she fears he’ll be harmed by their machinations: “He can’t even imagine how deep the deception actually goes, like a tunnel right to the molten center of the earth.”
It’s a lot for Claudia to juggle, especially on a bicycle. Anyone who appreciates a witty contemporary whodunit with a tech-y twist will enjoy the entertaining, thought-provoking goings-on in The Rivals as it explores the insidiousness of technology, the dark side of dating algorithms and the often amusingly complicated life of a dedicated amateur sleuth.
