A quick glance at the cover of Austin Kelley’s ”The Fact Checker,” and you’ll recognize by font alone that the fact-checking taking place is at The New Yorker. The magazine in the novel is unnamed, but we get the gist. Plus, Kelley’s bio states that he was once a fact checker at — you got it — The New Yorker. The narrator, known to us as the Fact Checker, describes his life during a story he was assigned in 2004. An entertaining and sprightly read, it’s also a novel describing a world that manages to be both foundational to our current world and yet long gone at the same time.

The Fact Checker is good at his job. We meet him as he describes investigating one story’s accuracy by quizzing, almost badgering, the widow of a fallen CIA officer. It’s all in service to the article, to its ve

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