Zombies had grabbed the attention of lawyers and judges centuries before The Walking Dead premiered on AMC. I refer to a special species of zombies—the ones introduced in Chapter 7 of my newest Rachel Gold mystery, THE DEAD HAND: Their lawyers call them, “high net-worth individuals prepared to shoulder the responsibility for providing wealth for future generations and essential funding for important causes even after they are no longer with us.” Benny calls them zombies. And since zombies are already dead, they’re hard to kill. Let me explain: As a lawyer by day, I try to feature one curious legal concept in each of my novels. Past examples...

When I was in second grade, I had a teacher who used history class to teach us about Wisconsin. We spent the school year learning cool stuff about our state. We were lucky enough to have lots of field trips to all sorts of historical places and important Wisconsin places. It was that school year when I learned about the Milwaukee Historical Society and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Even at that age I thought it was great that a group would take over buildings and preserve them so future generations could learn from them and appreciate them. The Wisconsin Historical Society also publishes books and sponsors other media to help people...

Jon: Shane, I’m a huge fan of the your John Lago books so I need to know, are we going to see more of him? Shane: Absolutely. I will never abandon my soul brother John and soul sister Alice. And as long as people keep asking this question and wanting to see them again, I will keep writing books in that series. I have a concept for my next Lago novel and I think people are going to love it. It will be more outrageous than the first two books combined and I plan to work on it over the next several months. Jon: Where did Kennedy (THE ASSET) come from? He’s quite different that John Lago… Shane: Like all of the characters I write, Kennedy...

You would be misinformed if I claimed to be an unbiased reader in reviewing Blake Crouch’s DARK MATTER but I am a forever reader and for ABANDON was a first reader. So if nothing else, I know this man’s word play, meter and voice. Only I don’t. But I do. I circled around DARK MATTER for a couple of months. Daniel of Boswell Books in Milwaukee proclaimed it “book of the year.” And so I went home and did my second dusk to dawn reading of the year. Imagine a mystery? Imagine that mystery taking place in multiple time lines with infinite conclusions? Imagine reading a story and being absolutely certain you know who...

This weekend San Diego was overrun with fanboys, geeks and all sorts of obsessed folk dressed in garb that likely leaves most people scratching their heads. Comic-Con is upon us. Once upon a time, it was about comics, but now is a launching pad for all things Hollywood. And this year, it looks like DC Comics’s Entertainment Division has found it’s funny. After years of dark, brooding films, the new trailers for WONDER WOMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE and SUICIDE SQUAD provide color, humor and a spirit that has been missing for years. Christopher Nolan’s BATMAN films did have spirit, but were the birth of the darkness that enveloped...

  JOSEPH FINDER is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve previous novels, including The Fixer, Suspicion, Vanished, and Buried Secrets. Finder’s international bestseller Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers’s Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include Paranoia and High Crimes, which both became major motion pictures.  His latest, GUILTY MINDS, came out on July 19th. He i a founding member of the International Thriller Writers Association, is active in the Boston Book Festival, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and lives in...

THE GATES OF JANUS Ian Brady 2015 Feral House You are reading this review in CrimeSpree Magazine, which means I’m into crime. I find crime fascinating. However, my wheelhouse is Organized Crime. Serial killers were never a thing I found myself drawn to in the past. When it comes to killing, there are things I understand and things I don’t. When I read something like, “Ralphie was shot 2x in the head and was left in the trunk of a car. The boss ordered it because Ralphie was skimming drug profits,” – that I understand. It’s business. When it comes to torture there are things I understand and things I...

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE Directed by Taika Waititi Written by Barry Crump Starring Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Reima Te Wiata A boy who’s been shuffled from foster home to foster home finds a nurturing environment with an older couple in the New Zealand bush. When his foster mother dies, the father (Neill) reluctantly takes in the boy. The social worker, assigned to the case, finds this arrangement, untenable and this leads to a long chase through the bush country. This is the plot in general but it fails to account for the humor, tenderness, and quirky characters the two runaways come upon. HUNT also has a great soundtrack, terrific...