In The Verifiers, Jane Pek introduced readers to the quirky, clever Claudia Lin: book-loving, bike-riding English major in search of a meaningful career. The Rivals picks up seven months into Claudia working for Veracity, a kind of "online-dating detective agency" in New York City that verifies the accuracy of user information fed into the ubiquitous, big-tech matchmakers that dominate the not-too-distant future Pek imagines for the series. Having solved a murder and uncovered a corporate conspiracy in the previous novel, Claudia is now unexpectedly co-owner of the agency with her former coworkers, Becks and Squirrel. Now, the three colleagues are in a tentative partnership while trying to figure out why the "Big Three" matchmaker companies are developing artificial-intelligence driven "synths" to mimic human users on their platforms--and to stop them from reaching whatever sinister goal they are racing toward. After all, as Claudia herself muses, "What sort of self-respecting detective story stalls out with: and they sat back to watch the bad guys continue on forever after?"
Where The Verifiers drew heavily on murder mystery tropes (Claudia is inspired by her favorite fictional detective, Inspector Yuan), The Rivals blends the murder mystery genre with the "pea-souper of the espionage narrative: double agents, secretive organizations, ongoing machinations for influence and control." The resulting genre cocktail is a testament to Pek's skill in building a story arc, at once aware of its tropes and seamlessly threading them into a tightly woven plot that grows ever more complex from start to cliffhanger finish.
Within this, Pek nestles timely and increasingly relevant questions about the role of technology in our everyday lives, the risk of sharing data without understanding (or even reading) privacy agreements, and the part that AI could--or perhaps already does--play in shaping our interactions both online and off. In the end, every good spy operates from the belief that "there's another world shifting beneath the one we all see, and that it might be possible to change it"--and Claudia and her coconspirators are no exception. With enough detail for those unfamiliar with Claudia's backstory to start in media res, and enough left unanswered to tease another novel featuring the beloved heroine, The Rivals is the best kind of second-in-a-series: the kind guaranteed to leave readers eager for more. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer
Shelf Talker: The second in a series featuring a quirky, literary-loving heroine living out the genre tropes of murder mysteries and spy novels as she works to take on the nefarious plots of big tech matchmakers.