-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
by Pamela Colloff
The riveting, true story of an audacious con man who helped send another man to death row for a murder he did not commit.
For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the Gulf Coast lying about who he was. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. In these guises he married nine women—some at the same time.
When Skalnik got caught, as he invariably did, he would run a different con. Locked up with other men awaiting trial, he claimed they confessed their crimes to him. Then he peddled those stories to prosecutors. In Pinellas County, Florida, he became a frequent witness for the state, thinking nothing of exaggerating men's wrongdoing or implicating the innocent to help prosecutors win convictions. In return, the state rewarded him with his freedom, fueling his growing sense of invincibility. Soon he was not just committing fraud; he was preying on girls in their teens or barely into adolescence.
In 1985, Jim Dailey, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, was implicated in the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and landed in the Pinellas County Jail with Skalnik. No forensic evidence or motive linked Dailey to the killing, but Skalnik's account of his "confession" helped put Dailey on death row. Skalnik, meanwhile, walked free. More than three decades later, after another man took responsibility for the killing, Pamela Colloff, reporting for the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, visited Skalnik and asked him if he would recant his testimony. He refused.
By then, Skalnik had caused untold damage: to the women and girls he exploited, to the dozens of men he helped imprison, and to Jim Dailey, who went on to receive an execution date. In this mesmerizing debut, Pamela Colloff spins a dark tale of a remorseless and brilliant liar made lethal by a system more concerned with winning convictions than finding the truth.
"A fiery indictment of a system that rewards jailbird snitches for 'telling just the right story.'" —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Both a chilling profile of an evildoer and a glimpse into a fractured justice system, this enlightens and entertains in equal measure." —Publishers Weekly
"Pamela Colloff is one of our great chroniclers of crime and criminal justice, and in this incendiary, emotionally devastating book, she depicts a justice system turned completely inside out, in which the innocent are incarcerated and the guilty skip free. The conman at the heart of her story, Paul Skalnik, is as chilling and unrepentant as any movie villain. Catch the Devil is a feat of dogged reporting, bravura storytelling, and clear-eyed moral conscience." —Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing and London Falling
"One of America's finest journalists, Pamela Colloff, has delivered a wallop of a debut book—loaded with moral clarity and astounding detail—about one of the world's most infernal liars, the scores of lives he destroyed, and the criminal-justice system that still, shockingly, benefits from those lies." —Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road
This information about Catch the Devil was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Pamela Colloff is a reporter at ProPublica and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She was the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2020 and for Feature Writing in 2013. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Crime Reporting, and Next Wave: America's New Generation of Great Literary Journalists. Colloff holds a bachelor's degree in English from Brown University. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and their two children.
If you liked Catch the Devil, try these:
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
