The Fact Checker: A Debut Novel, uncorrected proof

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.

Austin Kelley is a former New Yorker fact checker. As a journalist he has written for The New York Times, The Nation, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. He has a Ph.D. from Duke University, and now teaches writing at NYU. The Fact Checker is his first novel.