The Fact Checker

by Austin Kelley

Mirthful, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly philosophical, The Fact Checker is a brilliant debut novel featuring a missing woman who might be perfectly fine, and a single-minded investigator yearning for meaning, morality, and accuracy in an increasingly post-truth world.

It’s just a puff piece about a farmer’s market, I said to myself. It’s not going to kill anyone.

It started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, “Mandeville/Green,” didn’t raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week—it being 2004 New York City and all.

“Mandeville/Green” was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer’s hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to “nefarious business” at the farmer’s market. “People sell everything here,” she’s alleged to have said. “It ain’t all green.”

When Sylvia abruptly disappears the morning after an unexpectedly long night with the Fact Checker, he becomes obsessed with finding her. Did Sylvia discover something unsavory about New Egypt or its messianic owner? Is it possible she had some reason to fear for her safety? Or was it simply something the Fact Checker said?

Striking the perfect balance of humor, wonder, sadness, and poignancy, Austin Kelley’s debut novel takes readers on a quixotic quest from one hidden corner of New York City to another—from an underground supper club in the Financial District to an abandoned-boat-turned-anarchist-community-space on the Gowanus Canal. As the story develops, the Fact Checker begins to question his perception of what’s real and what’s not. Facts can be deceiving, after all, and if you aren’t careful, you might miss the truth right in front of your eyes.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Humor, Audiobook, Novels, New York, Contemporary

256 pages, Hardcover

Published April 15, 2025

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published April 15, 2025.

3 stars for a book I expected to like more than I did. Boo.

The piece was called Mandeville/Green in fact checker parlance (name of the author plus a one word stab at the subject matter.) It was really nothing, just a little story about a farm and farmer’s market called New Egypt that was producing some popular tomatoes. However, the story contains an odd quote from a woman called Sylvia about some possibly shady business at the farm.

Then Sylvia disappears and the Fact Checker becomes obsessed with finding her. Has she discovered a secret about New Egypt or its owner?

I really, really wanted to love this. I liked the Fact Checker. I loved the sections about fact checking. The rest of the book had some nice details but the primary story was just weak. Three stars.

[Jill Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is such a fabulous premise, and the beginning held a lot of promise - unfortunately, things devolved rather quickly and the book felt like a hodgepodge of distracting details after a while and completely lost the threads of its narrative for me. I really liked the sprinkling of random facts as the eponymous fact checker moved through his days, but it became more of a diversion from the underlying mystery - hinted at early in with delicious teasing tones - and when chapter after chapter went by and nothing seemed to happen, that diversion quickly came to feel like it had overtaken the plot.

There's promise in the concept and the writing. The introductory bits that set things up were crisply edited and to the point, meandering when it was appropriate to set the tone but still adhering to an overall forward motion. If the rest of the book could hold onto that style, it would be a truly fabulous read. Unfortunately I got so lost in the minutiae that I found myself meandering in attention, and that is never a good thing...

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.

[Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse) · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel is a hot mess. I don’t know why I picked it up—other than that the New Yorker-style cover and the premise both seemed appealing—and I don’t know why I kept reading it. Nothing makes sense, but it also isn't absurd enough for the nonsense to be amusing. The protagonist, the fact checker of an unnamed NYC-based magazine, manages to be simultaneously misanthropic and uninteresting as he bumbles his way through NYC, meeting up with countless colourful characters roughly connected to a consommé-thin plot. There is not much that is mirthful or laugh-out-loud funny, as the blurb promises. At the point where a terrified, about-to-be-slaughtered lamb, being kept in a Manhattan loft bathroom, is likened to a Bichon Frise, that’s when I knew I had to put it down.

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dismal. I did not finish. I gave it far more than the 50 pages. I promise every book I will try. I always a little over halfway through but I just had no interest in what happened or any interest in the narrator or any interest in any of it. It makes me sad cuz I think a fact checker's job is pretty cool and I like the New Yorker. I've even been interviewed by a fact checker once and found it amazingly detailed and very much like this person describes it but nothing could make this book interesting, it's a fantastic premise in search of a plot.

[Susan Tunis · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Is this a mystery? A character study? The pace was off and the ending was unsatisfying. Not funny, either.

Great cover, though.

[Jenn Chastka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley, for sending me this ARC before it's published. The book is set around a fact checker who must investigate every detail set before him, so far as feeling the need to question if any detail is entirely true. When his friend, Sylvia, disappears without confirming the "“nefarious business” at the farmer’s market, the fact checker is on the case. Though finding out what's so nefarious about a farmers market is more difficult than it seems and the investigation leads the fact checker spiraling. Will he find the answers he was looking for?

As promising as the plot was, I can only give this book two stars. I enjoyed the beginning of the book and the main protagonist reminded me of Arthur Less from the Andrew Sean Greer's Pulitzer Winning Novel "Less," I fell out of interest halfway through the book. While the parts that led the main antagonist into interesting settings, the inner dialogue did not make the story as engrossing.

But the fact remains (I had to say it) I enjoyed Kelley's writing as it shows much talent when the main antagonist was active. I hope to see more of their work in the future.

[Betsy Scheintaub · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a biased reviewer since I know Austin but I really loved this book. I actually laughed out loud several times and it was this humor and surprising wordplay that made the book so enjoyable. I am tired of first person narrators that are despicable people. Here we have a narrator that is not lovable but ultimately relatable, and a plot that goes in various directions and never fully resolves. This is a novel that you engage with through the details, the dialogue, and the locations. It feels like the author had fun writing it which might be the best thing you can say about a book

[TaxusNocturnus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version of the book on Everand.
I just am not sure about this one. It started off fine but then just got jumbled and started to be a Hot mess. And the end... Urgh, the end was disapointing. I do not know, realy. 3 stars for effort...

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't post reviews anymore (I write private notes), but I have to say something about this novel which is getting poor reviews on GR. To wit: The concept was smart - a story about a fact checker at a prestigious magazine (The New Yorker, though it's not named). I enjoyed the farmers' market intrigue and the colorful characterization of hipsters circa 2001. I nerded-out on the fact checker secrets. I didn't even mind the meandering storyline or the tangents that nearly took it off the rails. But the lamb scene. And everything that led up to it in the bathroom. Why did the author go there? Gratuitous and horrifying animal abuse. This was a hurl-the-book-across-the-room moment. If that scene had come before the halfway mark I would not have finished. Now I just want to put that out of my mind's eye forever. I can't imagine having to fact check that scene if this were an actual New Yorker piece.

[mari · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.75/5 Rounded Up

This book starts out really fun and captivating. The writing reads like being inside the main character's head and it's easy to follow. There are random bits of information woven into the story that overall fits the vibe of him being a fact checker. I think Austin Kelley did a good job of setting up an interesting premise and, despite the Sylvia being a "manic pixie dream girl" type, I wanted to keep reading. However as soon as Sylvia disappears the story just falls apart. There's so much running around and yet no questions are ever answered and it really makes you question how this guy has kept his job as a fact checker for as long as he has. After a while the random bits of information also start to get annoying and I was left wishing the story would have gone in a different direction. Things wrap up in the last 50ish pages and it just all felt like a last minute attempt to tidy everything up.

There's also a weird unnecessary scene involving a lamb in the middle of this book that I just fail to see what it added at all to this story? I think the charm of this book wore off 50% in and it was hard to gain back. Overall sadly disappointed but happy it didn't take long to read.

[Moira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so weird lol I loved it. I truly could never anticipate where it was going, and he covered so much ground in journalism/politics/history that made me laugh and get existential about my life and career. Also the ending was so simple and so good.

[Anna]

DNF @33%. Thought it would be a lot more fun, as a former copy editor/fact checker, but it's just annoying.

[Mary Ann Livingood · Rating 3 out of 5]

so many facts, but no plot

[Soumil Agarwal · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun read with a lot of potential for a better ending

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will state that up I read this during the long hours while waiting for people to vote during my poll worker stint. So 2 stars rounded up for keeping me from utter boredom. Just. But was disappointed. Two laugh out loud moments buried deep in drudgery. Regrettably, this was not a book I enjoyed.

[Thomas Cooney · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book as dull and tasteless as the processed, genetically-modified tomatoes it skewers. I think the only reason I finished reading it was because it was creatively constructed so that it was probably little more than a 100-page novella made fat with large font and 40 chapters.

Our “fact checking guy” is on a quixotic mission to track down a certain “Sylvia” with whom he spent all of one night. We are told that she is irresistible and unforgettable, when in fact she is a resistible and very forgettable ghost of a character; she’s little more than six letters that add up to a name.

And don’t EVEN get me started on the utterly pointless and silly sheep chapter. IYKYK

One of the blurbs says the novel is a wonderful profile of what it’s like to be young and in love with New York City. I LOVE NYC novels. This NYC was completely unrecognisable, and not the NYC I used to live in.

The cover art and “look” of the book is fantastic, but as the novel warns us, looks can be deceiving.

[The Bookish Elf · Rating 2 out of 5]

Austin Kelley's debut novel The Fact Checker arrives with ambitious intentions but delivers a frustratingly uneven experience that mirrors its protagonist's own scattered investigation. Set against the backdrop of 2004 New York City, this mystery-thriller hybrid follows an unnamed fact-checker whose pursuit of a missing woman spirals into an existential crisis about truth, meaning, and connection in an increasingly unreliable world.

The premise holds promise: a routine puff piece about a farmers market leads to the disappearance of Sylvia, a scarred tomato farmer who makes cryptic references to "nefarious business" before vanishing after a night with our protagonist. What follows is a meandering journey through New York's underground scenes—from anarchist collectives to underground supper clubs—as the fact-checker obsesses over finding both Sylvia and some larger truth about corruption in organic farming.

Character Development: Lost in Translation
The Unnamed Protagonist

Kelley's decision to leave his narrator unnamed feels deliberate yet ultimately hollow. The fact-checker embodies the post-9/11 anxiety of educated urbanites—perpetually questioning, doubting, and seeking meaning in an uncertain world. His obsessive attention to detail serves both as professional asset and personal curse, creating a character study that occasionally resonates but more often frustrates.

The protagonist's voice carries authentic neuroses and encyclopedic tangents that feel genuine to the profession. When he explains the physics of Hideo Nomo's forkball or delves into the history of Union Square's memorials, Kelley captures the fact-checker's compulsive need to contextualize everything. However, these diversions often derail narrative momentum rather than enriching it.

Sylvia: The Enigmatic Catalyst

Sylvia emerges as more symbol than character—a vessel for the protagonist's romantic and idealistic projections rather than a fully realized person. Her background in communes and cults, her facial scar, and her mysterious disappearance feel calculated to intrigue rather than authentic. The sparse details we learn about her serve the plot's mystery elements but fail to make her someone readers genuinely care about finding.

Supporting Cast: Sketches Without Depth

The novel's supporting characters—from the megalomaniacal farm owner Jack Jarvis to the theatrical Agnes—read more like archetypes than individuals. Jarvis represents corrupt authority, Agnes embodies bohemian performance, and various farmers market vendors serve as colorful background. While Kelley writes their dialogue with competence, none develop beyond their functional roles in the protagonist's journey.

Plot Analysis: Promise and Pitfalls
The Mystery That Isn't

The central mystery of Sylvia's disappearance and the "nefarious business" at New Egypt Farms builds tension effectively in the novel's first half. Kelley plants intriguing clues: references to drug dealing, mysterious financial arrangements, and the protagonist's discovery of Chinese tomato invoices. These elements create genuine suspense about what darkness might lurk beneath the wholesome facade of organic farming.

However, the investigation's resolution proves deeply unsatisfying. The Chinese tomato revelation—potentially fraudulent imports masquerading as local produce—feels both anticlimactic and underexplored. More problematically, Sylvia's fate remains largely unresolved, reducing her to a MacGuffin that drives the protagonist's development rather than a mystery worth solving.

Pacing Problems

The novel suffers from significant pacing issues that undermine its thriller aspirations. Extended sequences like the anarchist boat party and the underground supper club feel indulgent rather than purposeful, padding the narrative without advancing character or plot. The fact-checker's various tangents about baseball statistics, tomato varieties, and historical trivia create atmosphere but often at the expense of momentum.

Thematic Exploration: Ambitious but Unfocused
Truth in the Post-Truth Era

Kelley tackles weighty themes about truth, verification, and reality in an age of increasing uncertainty. The protagonist's professional dedication to facts contrasts sharply with his personal confusion about relationships, meaning, and purpose. This tension between professional competence and personal dysfunction creates the novel's most compelling moments.

The farming subplot serves as an effective metaphor for authenticity versus deception. The contrast between genuine organic farming and potentially fraudulent imports mirrors larger questions about how we distinguish authentic from artificial in all aspects of modern life.

Urban Alienation and Connection

The novel explores themes of isolation and connection in post-9/11 New York with mixed success. The protagonist's loneliness feels authentic, and his desperate pursuit of Sylvia reflects genuine yearning for meaningful connection. However, Kelley's treatment of these themes lacks the depth and sophistication found in better urban literary fiction.

Writing Style: Competent but Inconsistent
Narrative Voice Strengths

Kelley demonstrates real skill in capturing the fact-checker's professional voice and obsessive personality. The protagonist's tendency to digress into historical or technical details feels authentic to someone whose job requires encyclopedic knowledge and attention to minutiae. These moments of expertise ground the character and create believable professional texture.

The author also succeeds in evoking early 2000s New York, from the still-fresh trauma of 9/11 to the nascent locavore movement. Period details feel researched and authentic without becoming overwhelming.

Structural Weaknesses

The novel's structure suffers from significant problems that prevent it from achieving its potential. Individual scenes often meander without clear purpose, and the three-part division feels arbitrary rather than meaningful. The ending arrives abruptly without satisfying resolution to either the mystery or character arcs.

Dialogue frequently feels stilted, particularly in romantic or emotional scenes. Characters often speak in ways that serve plot exposition rather than revealing personality or advancing relationships naturally.

Cultural Context and Relevance
Post-9/11 Professional Anxiety

The novel effectively captures the particular anxiety of knowledge workers in post-9/11 America—educated professionals questioning their purpose while obsessing over details that may ultimately prove meaningless. The fact-checker's crisis of faith in his profession reflects broader cultural uncertainties about expertise and authority.

Locavore Movement Origins

Kelley's exploration of early farmers market culture and organic farming provides interesting historical context for readers familiar with how these movements developed. The tension between idealistic farming goals and commercial realities feels authentic to the period.

Final Verdict: Unrealized Potential

The Fact Checker presents intriguing ideas about truth, authenticity, and connection in contemporary urban life but fails to develop them with sufficient depth or coherence. While Kelley demonstrates genuine writing talent and creates an authentic professional voice, the novel suffers from structural problems, unsatisfying resolution, and characters that remain more symbolic than human.

The book works best as a period piece capturing early 2000s anxieties about expertise and authority in an uncertain world. Readers interested in workplace fiction or New York literary culture may find enough to appreciate, but those seeking a compelling mystery or deeply developed character study will likely leave disappointed.

[Peacewish · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a pile of garbage. I was periodically seized by the desire to throw it out the window, and the only thing that kept me from it was remembering that I was on an airplane. That I was stuck on that airplane, and one interminably long layover before getting on the next, is the only reason I even finished The Pile - I simply had nothing else to do. How does crap like this ever get published in a world where beginner novelists have such a hard time getting past the editorial gatekeepers?

First and most criminally, it's not funny. I don't know how he managed it, with such a great set-up for a comedy mystery, but Kelley has no talent for writing comedic dialogue. Instead he follows the M. Night Shyamalan playbook of meeting one random character after another, each of whom always has something odd to say. Not funny, odd. A girl in a coffee shop lectures him on practicing long term vision. A woman in a farmers market rhapsodizes about tomatoes. A redhead muses about the war memorial for Irish in Central Park. None of it connects to anything else or goes anywhere.

Second, I think it's about time that authors should have to sacrifice 10% of their royalties every time they take an unwarranted shit on capitalism in their prose. Since the protagonist was gainfully employed by a pretentious magazine, he certainly had no reason to hate on it as often as he did.

Third, I'm very over characters in New York who treat the geography of their city like it's the most fascinating forty acres that ever was, and go into exhausting detail narrating their every move across the 'trendy' or 'boring' blocks of it. Nobody else in the country cares about the trendiness of your neighborhood. Get over it.

Fourth, the lamb scene. Other readers know what I'm talking about. The most brutal scene in the story, rendered all the worse because of its Shyamalan-esque irrelevance to the story.

Fifth, the ending. Are you fucking kidding me? All that set up, all that intrigue, the trip out to the farmer cult... and she was FINE? She wrote a cryptic note to the protagonist, spooked him to high heaven, and it's all because she got antsy and MOVED? Bitch, this guy lost his job for you. Though he hates capitalism, so I guess that's okay. What a pointless waste of time. I'd have been better off staring at the airplane buttons overhead.

[Emily Crebbin · Rating 3 out of 5]

“There were certainly no perfect communities; no one could accurately and ethically engineer their social world; no one could avoid the Civil War and industrial capital and the unpredictable blur of it all. Or at least, no one had.”

2.5. This had the potential to be so good and it just fell slightly flat for me!!! I loved that the story was told as a film noir style detective movie taking place at a farmers market in 2004, I just wanted the stakes to be higher to match. I actually found the ending charming and funny, but wished it tied itself together more. It felt like it ended really abruptly without a satisfying conclusion. I really wanted this to be great and it just fell short for me which was a major bummer, especially because it had all the potential to be a GREAT story.

[Todd · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible

[Richelle Holnick · Rating 2 out of 5]

An adult paper towns, but with very little action.

[Chris Kauzlarich · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book lost my attention on numerous occasions. I did end up finishing it but skimmed the last 40 pages and still got the gist of the ending.

[Barbara Hall Forrest · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lighthearted and often funny send up of New York and New Yorkers, through the lens of a literary magazine and a farmers market.

[grace mcmurray · Rating 2 out of 5]

it’s giving 24k dubai chocolate labubu performative male manipulator millennial living in roku city. did everyone in 2004 collectively lose their minds???? just read Looking For Alaska instead. this gets an extra star for big papi red sox mention

[TrixieB · Rating 1 out of 5]

Philosophy Bro Says What?

This book is utter dreck. Kelley is an established journalist, so assumes he can be an author. Many people believed him. They were ALL wrong.

The concept, writing, characters, setting, plot, motivations, ... ALL OF IT. Terrible.

MC is a stalker btw. That's just not okay.

This reads like someone REALLY loves Pynchon but also doesn't understand it.

Save yourself. Hard pass.

CW animal cruelty and death

[Terri Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been taking classes at NYU for fact checking and publishing and my classmate told me about this book. I really enjoyed hearing about the actual fact checking process and local spots around NYC. But otherwise I found the main character annoying and the story just a repeat of the same stuff to the end. Also the part in the middle (sheep) just wasn’t needed. After that part I basically gave up.

[Denny · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a former magazine fact-checker myself, I certainly love the idea of a fact checker in the role of a noir detective. Unlike the unnamed protagonist, I never checked any articles that required leaving my cubicle, but Austin Kelley's magazine-world blowhards ring true. There’s a bit too much reliance noir tropes like attractive and mysterious women who throw themselves at the narrator, and an ambiguous life-goes-on ending. But still nice reliving New York's last days of glossy magazines in the aughts.

[Asher Zemmel · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s a shame that this book is so bad because the premise (a fact checker for definitely-not-the-New Yorker is sent to follow up on a piece about a tomato farm at the Union Square farmers market only to uncover illicit business) is so great that if it’s ever used again, an author will be accused of plagiarizing this frustrating, sloppy, and self-important book. The premise was wasted on the story itself and the random references to Afghanistan and 9/11 add nothing to plot. There’s a scene where the protagonist (antagonist to my enjoyment) jumps in the Gowanus Canal - fitting because that’s where this book belongs.

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the heck was that supposed to be? The first half was enjoyable and it was actually quite interesting reading about his job as a fact checker. Then the whole thing went completely off the rails.

[Jim Kownacki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good not great, big reveal at the end was predictable.