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Jeff Daugherty

Jeff Daugherty

Jeff Daugherty graduated from Bard College and now writes and edits for BookTrib. In addition to books, he likes dogs and podcasts.

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Jeff Daugherty

Thrillers

“The Escape Room” is the Thriller of the Summer

The Escape Room (St. Martin’s Press) has the revenge plotting of The Perfect Girlfriend, the yuppie satire of American Psycho and the badass women reclaiming corporate America of Whisper Network. It’s also probably the best new thriller you’ll read this summer. Sara Hall reluctantly joins a prestigious Wall Street firm…
Jeff Daugherty
July 30, 2019
Fiction

A Jack the Ripper Romp with Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle teams up with radical social critic Margaret Harkness to find and apprehend the yet-unnamed Jack the Ripper. Along for the ride is Doyle’s former professor, Joseph Bell, a masterful surgeon who just so happens to be the inspiration for the character of Holmes. Now…
Jeff Daugherty
July 29, 2019
Fiction

A Clever, Gruesome New YA Voice

It seems like every time an important work of pop culture enters the public consciousness, comparisons are drawn to a lesser-known work that the new one may or may not have plagiarized. It’s happened with the Harry Potter franchise (The Adventures of Willy the Wizard) and with Disney’s Lion King…
Jeff Daugherty
July 19, 2019
Nonfiction

Carnage in America: The Fall of the Republican Party

POLITICO’s Tim Alberta, author of American Carnage (Harper), asked a “blissfully retired” John Boehner over lunch whether he believed that the Republican Party “could survive Trumpism.” Boehner’s response? “There is no Rep—” Here he stops, hesitates, and when pressed, offers “There is . But what does that even mean? Donald…
Jeff Daugherty
July 17, 2019
Miscellany

Edith Wharton… Poet?

I should probably start off this review by mentioning that I don’t know anything about poetry. Some of it is good and some of it is bad, but the bad poetry tends never to get published and popular, so I think it’s safe to assume that most of the poetry…
Jeff Daugherty
July 9, 2019
Fiction

A Chart-Topping Debut Novel

“The thing about being famous for so long is that like, you never really hang with any normal people anymore, because it’s just weird for everybody.” Despite this assertion, Famous People (Henry Holt) is a novel about normal people, or at least people who consider themselves to be normal. Sure,…
Jeff Daugherty
July 9, 2019
NonfictionSave the World

The Bright Side to Voluntourism

When I picked up Travel with Purpose (Rowman & Littlefield) I was skeptical. I’ve never had much of a real opinion on “voluntourism” myself, but I’ve read countless op-eds skewed towards each side, some encouraging anybody who has the means to incorporate volunteering into their next vacation and others, including…
Jeff Daugherty
June 24, 2019
Thrillers

Mysteries and Middle Age Woes in “Pilate’s Blood”

Everybody slows down in their forties. Shouldn’t the same go for action heroes? This is the sort of commentary with which author J. Alexander Greenwood subverts the mystery series formula in Pilate’s Blood. John Pilate returns home to Cross Township to accept a position as the town constable while they…
Jeff Daugherty
June 13, 2019
FictionSave the World

Returning Hate Mail to Sender

“You hunted me down,” begins Vivek Shraya on the first page of her graphic novel Death Threat (Arsenal Pulp Press). A hate email explodes into her inbox one morning and Vivek’s initial reaction is “Haha wow.” It’s not the reaction that the email’s author expected, or hoped for. He is…
Jeff Daugherty
May 7, 2019