James Patterson

James Brendan Patterson (born in Newburgh, New York, in 1947) is an American novelist best known for suspense fiction and for turning writing into a large-scale publishing enterprise. His name is tied to commercial crime fiction of recent decades and to a collaborative way of working that has produced both huge sales and sustained debate.

He was the son of an insurance broker and a mother who worked as a homemaker and teacher, and he grew up in a working-class family of Irish descent. He studied English at Manhattan College and later earned a master's degree from Vanderbilt University, where he was a PhD candidate. Before turning to fiction full time, he worked in advertising at J. Walter Thompson, and he left that industry in 1996 to devote himself to writing.

His first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, came out in 1976, but his breakthrough was the Alex Cross series. Cross is a forensic psychologist who has worked for the Washington, D.C. police and the FBI and now works as a private consultant. The series began in 1993 with Along Came a Spider and became one of the best-selling American detective series of the 2010s. His books are known for short chapters, quick pacing and cliffhanger endings. Patterson has said he is more comfortable plotting stories than polishing sentences, an idea that helps explain how he works.

Beyond Cross, he has built other series, including Women's Murder Club, Michael Bennett, Private and NYPD Red, and he has written young adult fiction such as Maximum Ride. Many of these books are co-written: he supplies the story, and his collaborator drafts much of the text. The method has earned him praise for generating plots and criticism as well. Stephen King bluntly called him a terrible writer who is very successful, and scholars studying his process have questioned how much he writes himself.

His legacy is mainly commercial and editorial. His books have sold in enormous numbers, and his name has become something close to a brand. He founded the James Patterson PageTurner Awards in 2005 to encourage reading, and he has funded scholarships at universities and support for libraries. He lives in Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife, Susan, and their son, Jack.