First published 2026
Paul Skalnik spent over thirty years crafting elaborate lies across the Gulf Coast. He posed as a fighter pilot, oil executive, defense lawyer, undercover agent, and dying cancer patient. These personas helped him marry nine women, sometimes simultaneously. When caught, Skalnik would simply reinvent himself and start again. Behind bars awaiting trial, he discovered a new scheme. He claimed fellow inmates confessed their crimes to him, then sold these stories to prosecutors. Pinellas County officials rewarded his testimony with freedom, feeding his sense of untouchability. In 1985, Vietnam veteran Jim Dailey was charged with murdering a fourteen-year-old girl. No forensic evidence connected Dailey to the crime, but Skalnik's account of a jailhouse confession landed Dailey on death row. Award-winning journalist Pamela Colloff traces how Skalnik's web of deception destroyed countless lives while prosecutors prioritized convictions over truth. She reveals a justice system that enabled a master manipulator to flourish, leaving a trail of wrongful imprisonments and shattered families in his wake.
Genres: crime, non-fiction, biography-memoir, true-crime
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Gulf Coast, Pinellas County
Period: 1985
320 pages · Hardcover · Knopf