James Patterson

James Brendan Patterson, born March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York, is an American author whose career has stretched from the age of print blockbusters into the rise of e-books and television adaptations. The son of Isabelle Patterson, a homemaker and teacher, and Charles Patterson, an insurance broker, he grew up in a working-class family of Irish descent. He studied English with distinction, graduating summa cum laude from Manhattan University and earning an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt University.

Patterson was a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt when he left that path for a job as an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson. He later retired from advertising in 1996 and gave his full attention to writing. His first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, was published in 1976. Over the decades that followed, he became best known for fast-moving series fiction, including Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women’s Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch & Wizard, Private, and Middle School, along with stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction, romance novels, and books for younger readers.

The Alex Cross novels became his most popular work. Cross, a forensic psychologist formerly with the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, later works as a private psychologist and government consultant. The series was the top-selling U.S. detective series of the 2010s. Patterson has written more than 200 novels since 1976, has had more than 114 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds the record for the most No. 1 New York Times bestsellers by a single author, with 67, a mark also recognized by Guinness World Records.

His reach has been unusually large. Patterson’s books have sold more than 425 million copies, and he was the first person to sell one million e-books. In 2016, he topped Forbes’s list of highest-paid authors for the third year in a row, with income of $95 million, and his income over a decade was estimated at $700 million. His awards include the Edgar Award, the BCA Mystery Guild’s Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, the Children’s Choice Book Award for Author of the Year, the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award in 2015, and a National Humanities Medal in 2019.

Patterson has often worked with co-authors, among them J.D. Barker, Candice Fox, Maxine Paetro, Andrew Gross, Mark Sullivan, Ashwin Sanghi, Michael Ledwidge, and Peter de Jonge. In 2017, it was announced that he would co-author The President Is Missing with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Patterson has said collaboration brings new and interesting ideas to his stories, and that he is more proficient at dreaming up plots than crafting sentence after sentence. He has named Evan S. Connell’s 1959 debut novel Mrs. Bridge as probably his greatest influence.

Beyond publishing, Patterson has donated millions of dollars in grants and scholarships to universities, teachers’ colleges, independent bookstores, school libraries, and college students to promote literacy. He founded the James Patterson PageTurner Awards in 2005, later shifted focus to ReadKiddoRead.com, and set up teacher education scholarships at several universities. His work has also drawn criticism because of his many collaborations and the use of his name as a brand. Still, the scale of his readership shows how strongly many people respond to his clear plots, recurring characters, and belief that books should keep readers turning pages.