"Loot the market on the way up, loot the treasury on the way down." The plan is to eliminate this thinking, and what better way to purge the business than by using insiders, ones who no longer possess a filter between the truth and what is said. The problem is corruption is like a weed, and the roots grow deep. Loyalties, secrets, and favors keep unsavory deeds hush-hush, and sometimes it is easier to get information from a corpse than have one person turn on another. But what if a corpse could be primed for information, interrogated to get to a truth that some thought had been taken to the grave? What if this truth was filtered to those who needed to act on it, and what if that truth implicates very powerful people, with the thread leading all the way to the White House? You're left with a mess, questions, and a very real danger. Some secrets are taken to the grave for a reason, and now that they can be unveiled, no one is safe, especially those digging for the truth. And with such a means at their disposal, what's to ensure that justice remains fair when incriminating testimony can be gathered after the death sentence?

Dan Welch’s Death and Seven follows the story of multiple characters all working towards the same course. These story threads are delicately intertwined to give the reader a full picture of exactly what is going on and the consequences the actions of one group have on another. The characters are varied and interesting, each exploring their own moral and personal dilemmas and considerations. With the plot's steady and progressive pace, you see the perspectives of each division touched by the intelligence obtained via the postmortem interrogations. There are some strong characters, interesting opinions, and some great points for consideration. With crooks, mobsters, and investigations leading to places and people of great influence, there is no shortage of intrigue to keep you reading.

Death and Seven by author Dan Welch is an action-packed quick read on a science fiction theme. The central concept of the novel is fresh and exciting, focused on the executed corpses of people who have been charged with capital treason against large corporations. Amanda Wilson is part of a team that has discovered how to talk to the dead, and she’s working alongside the brilliant, beautiful and deceased Sarah Russell to investigate big-time Wall Street corruption. Heading the whole team is the dynamic Freddy Logan, but as he tries to piece together the puzzle of the wider corruption and scandal, it seems that the dead want to do a little more than talk after all.

This is a fabulous piece of genre-bending writing that takes classic story lines of crime and corruption and gives them a brand new twist. I enjoyed the corruption plot for what it was, as I’m sure many fans of the established genre would, and I thought that the science fiction elements were realistically integrated into the story so that it still made for a really credible read. It was refreshing to see messages from beyond the grave that didn’t solve the crime, but made it even more complicated and exciting. Dan Welch’s pacing was good and I was impressed by his snappy dialogue, though I wish the overall story had been a bit longer so we could get to know the characters more. Overall, I’d certainly recommend Death and Seven for its fresh perspective on corporate crime novels.

Gross malfeasance at big financial institutions is being prosecuted under treason in Death and Seven by Dan Welch. While public trust in the institutions is up and money is coming back into the markets, those individuals unlucky enough to be found guilty of treason end up summarily executed and on a bed in a top secret lab called Glimmer Development, located within the new veteran’s research hospital in Goshen, New York. Doctors Gregory Ellerby and Kenneth Conklin have developed a cutting edge technology to interrogate the corpses for additional information to be used by prosecutors in future take-downs. The whole operation is top secret but assistant Amanda Wilson, whose job it is to edit the corpse interrogation transcripts, crosses the line when she conducts her own interrogation of the newest subject, Sarah Russell, a wife and mother recently executed for treason, and then sends a letter to the dead woman’s attorney…

Interrogation of corpses, whistle blowers and summary executions are the tip of the iceberg in Dan Welch’s chilling thriller, Death and Seven. The book is quite frankly terrifying and somewhat Crichton-esque in its premise. With a bare-bones narrative and unembellished dialogue, both lend themselves well to the overall tone of the book. The pacing is fast and unrelenting, pulling the reader into the story from the first paragraph. However, the book is short, as are the chapters. Death and Seven is, nevertheless, an intelligent thriller that not only entertains but raises some interesting moral and technological dilemmas, among others.