Playing With Fire

A beautiful nurse. A lethal injection. A gruesomely charred corpse.

Nothing could have shocked the sleepy community of Morgantown, West Virginia, more than the lurid details that surfaced after a house fire claimed the life of Shelly Michael's husband Jimmy. Local authorities suspected possible arson. Then they discovered that Jimmy had been dead before the fire even startedparalyzed by a fatal dose of muscle relaxant Did Shelly Michael, a respected nurse and mother, kill her second husband and torch her own home?

Were the rumors true that she'd had an affair with her husband's employee only two weeks before the murder? Or did she kill Jimmy simply for the insurance money? Charged with first-degree murder and first-degree arson, Shelly would never stop claiming her innocenceeven to this day

John Glatt is the author of Lost and Found, Secrets in the Cellar, and many other bestselling books of true crime. He has more than 30 years of experience as an investigative journalist in England and America. Glatt left school at 16 and worked a variety of jobs-including tea boy and messenger-before joining a small weekly newspaper.

He freelanced at several English newspapers, then in 1981 moved to New York, where he joined the staff for News Limited and freelanced for publications including Newsweek and the New York Post. His first book, a biography of Billy Graham, was published in 1981, and he published For I Have Sinned, his first book of true crime, in 1998. He has appeared on television and radio programs all over the world, including Dateline NBC, Fox News, A Current Affair, BBC World News, and A&E Biography.

He and his wife Gail divide their time between New York City, the Catskill Mountains and London.