Engrossing and damning ... In Catch the Devil, Colloff's cinematic telling of this appalling case serves to highlight the potentially fatal consequences of a criminal legal system that is more concerned with securing convictions than determining the truth and delivering justice ... While this is Colloff's first book, she has spent decades reporting on the criminal justice system ... Those features, which blend meticulous reporting and riveting storytelling, have proved Colloff unparalleled at demonstrating the tragic costs of flaws in the criminal legal system.
Bracing ... Colloff’s rendering of Paul Skalnik, a career criminal and the other man at the center of the book, is chilling ... Colloff...has written a propulsive narrative full of memorable details.
One of the fascinations here is Skalnik’s psychic makeup ... Lacking actual cooperation, Colloff instead deploys her prodigious investigative reporting skills ... Its unusual villain makes Catch the Devil an engrossing read; the public policy implications make it important.
Catch the Devil illustrates Colloff’s rare ability to artfully dissect our monumentally disordered criminal justice system—including jailhouse snitches, the law-and-order mania of the 1980s and the fallibility of the death penalty—by latching on to one of its most egregious cases and refusing to let go.
An impressive portrait ... Both a chilling profile of an evildoer and a glimpse into a fractured justice system, this enlightens and entertains in equal measure.
