The fact checker A novel

Toiling at a weekly New York magazine in the early aughts, the Fact Checker gets a seemingly anodyne assignment about the Union Square Greenmarket, "portrayed as an ideal and an idyll." But a quote from farm-stand worker Sylvia gives him pause and ultimately sends him through a winding warren of uncertainty, which is anathema to the Fact Checker. He tracks Sylvia down, needing to know what she meant about "nefarious business" at the market. Then the two explore the city, places unknown even to the guy whose ex called him "Mr. Encyclopedia," and spend the night together before Sylvia disappears and the Fact Checker becomes a kind of PI. "All I was doing was tailing people, and I was clearly really bad at it." In his sort-of-mystery debut, with understated humor and zippy prose, former New Yorker fact-checker Kelley is a fluid and funny writer, divertingly digressing on the nature of fact-checking and filling out a backstory for the narrating Fact Checker, who, both well-informed and hilariously unaware, is as charmingly pedantic as a character could be.

Kelley debuts with an amusing tale inspired by his work as a fact-checker for the New Yorker. It's 2004, and the unnamed narrator is "drowning in a storm of information and doubt" at his fact-checking job for a weekly magazine. His assignments range from verifying a slain CIA officer's favorite shirt and marital transgressions to scrutinizing a food critic's review of the Union Square Greenmarket. The latter task sparks the narrator's curiosity after he comes across a note from farm vendor Sylvia about "nefarious business" at the market. Eager to ferret out the details, he reaches out to Sylvia. After a drunken night at a secret supper club, she goes home with him and they make out. The next morning, he finds a cryptic note from her. As the days pass and he's unable to reach her, the increasingly suspicious narrator slips into a tailspin. Kelley's droll and pithy narration propels the story, as does the impressive plotting as the narrator uncovers clues about illicit opioid sales at the farmer's market, which he worries is connected to Sylvia's disappearance. Readers will be swept up. Agent: Chris Clemans, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)

An endearingly obsessive fact-checker stumbles around New York in search of truth, meaning, and a woman. From theNew Yorker's iconic headline font to what certainly seem to be the real processes of the magazine's operation, Kelley's mostly charming debut is steeped in the lore of his former employer. As it opens, the unnamed narrator has received an assignment to fact-check a story known as "Mandeville/Green"--the name of the article's author plus a one-word "slug" to indicate the topic, in this case the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan: "That's Greenmarket, one word, capitalized. It's a trade name used by the Council on the Environment of New York City, a nonprofit that founded the city's farmers markets in 1976. That's the kind of thing I check first." Kelley gets often hilarious mileage out of this type of minutiae; in one memorable scene, the entire office falls silent to listen to a very senior member of the department fact-check a piece on 50 Cent. "'F-u-c-k-a?' we heard him say. 'Is that correct? Motherfucka?' He pronounced the end 'aah' like a child is supposed to when the doctor is looking down his throat." Our hero gets in over his head while trying to verify a reference to "nefarious practices" at the farmer's market, during which he meets an intriguing tomato grower named Sylvia, who becomes an obscure object of desire in and of herself. Most of this novel is wonderful, but there are a few serious caveats. One, there's an early giveaway of the outcome of one of the narrator's central quests, which dilutes its interest for the reader. Two, there is a disgusting and totally uncalled-for scene of gore, sure to turn off readers of the vegetarian persuasion. Somehow, after that nightmarish interlude, nothing seems as funny, and the close is a bit of a fizzle. This comic novel opens brilliantly but goes a mite awry by the end. Still, a bravura debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.