Written in Blood

The Edgar Award–nominated true crime story of the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson and the trial against her husband Michael—the subject of an acclaimed documentary, The Staircase, and an HBO Max miniseries starring Colin Firth.

"[Fanning's] writing is superb. . . . [She]has written a true-crime book focused more on the truth than on the crime. . . . A triumph." —Vance Holmes, author of Poetic Justice

An Army brat-turned-Marine, Michael Peterson saw combat in Vietnam and returned a decorated soldier. An avid reader, his dreams of being an acclaimed novelist came true. His desire to find love was fulfilled when he married brilliant executive Kathleen Atwater, the first female student accepted at Duke University's School of Engineering. Living in an exclusive area of Durham, North Carlina, the Petersons seemed the ideal academic couple—well-respected, prosperous, and happy.

All that came crashing down in December of 2001, when Kathleen apparently fell to her death in their secluded home. But blood-spattered evidence and a missing fireplace poker suggested calculated, cold-blooded murder. Her trusted husband stood accused. Prosecutors introduced evidence at trial that sixteen years earlier, Peterson was one of the last people to see his neighbor alive before she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her home in Germany. A dramatic trial followed in the explosive final chapter of a life that no novelist could ever have conceived . . .