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. He married nine women, some at the same time. When Skalnik got caught, as he invariably did, he ran a different con.
In this mesmerizing debut, Pamela Colloff tells the true story of an audacious con artist made lethal by a system more concerned with winning convictions than finding the truth.
“Incendiary, emotionally devastating...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
Available July 14
“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.”
Praise for Catch the Devil
“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.”
“You read each page of Pamela Colloff’s subtly written and stunningly reported book with a deepening sense of outrage. How could this happen? How could the justice system be so remorseless, so intractably focused on protocol and career wins at the expense of justice itself? Catch the Devil is an infuriating, illuminating, gripping narrative by one of the heroes of American journalism.”
“Pamela Colloff lights up the criminal justice system with a precision that leaves nowhere to hide. Catch the Devil is an extraordinary achievement, its narrative moving with the taut urgency of a thriller—anchored by the heart and humanity she brings to the pursuit of truth. An unforgettable masterwork from the leading voice in American crime reporting.”
“Pamela Colloff has ripped the roof off the criminal justice system with this exposé of a jailhouse snitch. You can’t read this book without a feeling of horror that one man could do so much damage; but the real shock is that he was only telling prosecutors what they wanted him to say.”
“A mesmerizing, often enraging portrait of a man whose skill at manipulating the judicial system led to untold injustices. Told with all the care, nuance, and dazzling reportage we expect from Pamela Colloff—one of the very best in the field right now—Catch the Devil reads like a literary thriller, rich in atmosphere and lively characters, but its larger resonances give it an extraordinary depth and its timeliness during America’s current grifter era could hardly be greater.”
“A masterful and riveting anatomy of how a series of institutions colluded with one man’s pathology. I can’t imagine a more damning and poignant account of a criminal justice system that was, fundamentally, willing to be fooled—and the lives destroyed and transformed in that process.”
About Pamela Colloff
Pamela Colloff is a reporter at ProPublica and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. Drawing on deep reporting and character-driven storytelling, she explores the American criminal justice system, revealing the ways in which it falls short of delivering justice.
Pam was the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2020 and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 2013. Her work has been adapted for both narrative and documentary films, including Tower, which was short-listed in 2016 for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Her work has also been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Reporting, and Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.
She joined ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine in 2017 after many years as a staff writer at Texas Monthly. An investigation she undertook there in 2010 — about a wrongly convicted man named Anthony Graves, who was sent to Texas’s death row — was credited with helping him win his freedom after 18 years behind bars. In 2014, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University awarded her the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism.
Her work has also garnered the Hillman Prize, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Writing, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Reporting on Incarceration and Criminalization, the IRE Award, the Scripps Howard Award for Human Interest Storytelling, the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism, and the MOLLY National Journalism Prize.
Originally from New York City, Pam graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in English. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two children. Catch the Devil is her first book.
Photo credit: Peter Yang