50 Fun Facts About James Patterson

Which former U.S. president co-wrote the thriller The President Is Missing with James Patterson?

Bill Clinton and Patterson's thriller sold 250,000 copies in its first week, by its publisher's count. The pair went on to write two more thrillers together.

Which country music star co-wrote the novel Run, Rose, Run with James Patterson and recorded a companion album?

Dolly Parton co-produced a full album of songs to go with the suspense novel. It was the forty-eighth studio album of her career.

Which actor played detective Alex Cross in the films Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider?

Morgan Freeman played the detective twice, in 1997 and 2001. The films came out of order: the first one adapted the second novel in the series.

Which horror novelist called James Patterson a terrible writer in a USA Weekend interview?

Stephen King added that Patterson was very successful all the same. Patterson said his own approach was to do the opposite and heap praise on his critic.

James Patterson finished Eruption from a manuscript left by which late novelist, at the request of his widow Sherri?

Michael Crichton left the volcano thriller unfinished when he died. Published in 2024, it became the fourth of his novels to appear after his death.

In James Patterson's Maximum Ride novels, Max and her lab-made family are 98 percent human and 2 percent what?

Bird DNA gives Max and her friends working wings, so they can fly. Patterson first tried the idea in two novels for adults before reworking it for teenagers.

In which city does detective Alex Cross live, having moved in with his grandmother there as a boy?

Washington, D.C. is both home and beat for Cross, who worked for the city's police and later the FBI. Several plots pull him into cases involving the president.

James Patterson's nonfiction book Filthy Rich, later a Netflix documentary series, investigates which financier?

Jeffrey Epstein was the subject of Patterson's 2016 book, written with John Connolly and Tim Malloy. The screen version followed in May 2020.

Which James Patterson novel about animals attacking humans worldwide became a CBS series starring James Wolk?

Zoo follows zoologist Jackson Oz as animal attacks grow more coordinated and ferocious. The series ran for three seasons before it was cancelled.

Early Alex Cross novels such as Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls take their titles from what?

Nursery rhymes supplied the titles, here Little Miss Muffet and Georgie Porgie, until 2006, when the hero's own name began appearing on the covers instead.

In 2010 James Patterson became the first author to sell more than one million copies in which format?

E-books put Patterson into Guinness World Records as the first author past a million digital sales. His running tally of bestsellers earned him a second Guinness record.

Alex Cross, the detective hero of Along Came a Spider, holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in which field?

Psychology is the training Cross brings to reading killers' minds. He has worked for both the city police and the FBI.

Which James Patterson detective solves crimes for the NYPD while raising ten adopted children?

Michael Bennett is an Irish American New York City detective who first appeared in Step on a Crack. His wife is dying of cancer as that first case unfolds.

What does sixth grader Rafe plan to do with the code of conduct in Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life?

Break every rule is the whole plan, which Rafe and his friend Leo name Operation R.A.F.E. He opens the campaign by pulling the fire alarm.

James Patterson's young hero Jamie Grimm, a middle-schooler who uses a wheelchair, is a natural at which line of work?

Comedian Jamie Grimm, the hero of I Funny, enters a contest to find the planet's funniest kid comic and wins his way to the state title. He jokes through grief for the family he lost in a car crash.

James Patterson and Martin Dugard wrote a nonfiction thriller arguing that which Egyptian pharaoh was murdered?

Tutankhamun is the victim in the pair's 2009 book, which treats the boy pharaoh's death as a crime. It sits on the nonfiction shelf of a writer known for invented killers.

Who took over as Alex Cross for the 2012 reboot film, facing Matthew Fox as the killer Picasso?

Tyler Perry played the detective for director Rob Cohen. The film was meant to restart the series, but critics panned it and it earned less than its $35 million budget.

The Women's Murder Club novels follow a detective, a reporter and a medical examiner in which city?

San Francisco is where the friends pool their skills to solve murders. A defense attorney, Yuki Castellano, joins the group later in the series.

James Patterson rose from junior copywriter to North American CEO of which advertising agency?

J. Walter Thompson hired him in New York after he quit a graduate English program. He wrote fiction in his spare time and left advertising in 1996.

James Patterson's debut, The Thomas Berryman Number, won which prize for best first novel after thirty-one rejections?

Edgar Award judges honoured a book that thirty-one publishers had turned down. Little, Brown finally brought it out in 1976.

What does Alex Cross call the grandmother who raised him and still lives with his family?

Nana Mama took Cross in as a boy and went on to help raise his children. Her real name is Regina, and she worked as an English teacher and assistant principal.

James Patterson's success at managing his own brand became a case study at which business school?

Harvard Business School turned his brand management into a case study. Patterson had learned the trade as the North American chief of an advertising agency.

In Kiss the Girls, a kidnapper holding young women captive in North Carolina goes by which nickname?

Casanova trades messages with a second killer on the West Coast, the Gentleman Caller. Cross joins the hunt because his own niece is among the missing.

Which police inspector, owner of a border collie named Martha, leads James Patterson's Women's Murder Club?

Lindsay Boxer is a divorced 34-year-old inspector when the series opens. She is promoted to chief of homicide in the second book, her dream since the academy.

In Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas, a diary later sent to book editor Katie, who is Nicholas to Suzanne?

Her newborn son is the reader Suzanne has in mind. Katie receives the diary from the poet who has just left her, as his way of explaining why.

James Patterson handed out $250,000 in holiday bonuses in 2015 to people working in which kind of business?

Bookstores were his cause that year: independent shops shared a further million dollars from him, and public school libraries received even more.

James Patterson and his wife, Susan, make their home in which Florida town?

Palm Beach is home for the couple, who have one son. The boy's reluctance to read inspired a website Patterson built to help parents find books children will finish.

James Patterson voiced himself in an episode called Yokel Chords on which animated series?

The Simpsons cast him as himself in the same episode as actor Andy Dick, who also played himself. Patterson has turned up as himself in live-action dramas too.

On which crime drama did James Patterson play himself, joining a mystery novelist's regular poker game?

Castle sat its title character down at cards with real writers, among them Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly. When one player died in 2010, an empty chair was kept at the table for a year.

Where did the young James Patterson work night shifts so quiet that he began reading constantly?

A mental hospital gave him the hours to read, and poet Robert Lowell was among those who checked in. He bought used books in Cambridge for a quarter each.

When James Patterson works with a co-author, what does he write first and send to the collaborator?

An extensive outline starts each joint book. The co-author writes the first draft from it, while Patterson tracks the story's progress and handles revisions.

James Patterson drew on his advertising career to promote Along Came a Spider with which kind of campaign?

Television ads orchestrated by Patterson himself helped make the 1993 thriller his breakout bestseller, seventeen years after his debut.

Who is Alex Cross's best friend and police partner, his companion since their boyhood?

John Sampson gave Cross his nickname, Sugar. The two have been best friends since boyhood, when they took up shoplifting together at a corner store.

What is the first name of Alex Cross's first wife, whose unsolved murder runs through the early novels?

Maria was killed by an assassin before the series begins, leaving Cross with two children. He learns who was responsible only in the novel titled Cross.

Which actor plays Alex Cross in the Prime Video series Cross, created by Ben Watkins?

Aldis Hodge leads a cast that includes Isaiah Mustafa and Juanita Jennings. All eight episodes of the first season arrived at once in November 2024.

Which actress starred in the 1997 film of James Patterson's Kiss the Girls as Kate McTiernan?

Ashley Judd later said a more violent ending was imposed on the film by the head of Paramount, Sherry Lansing. Cary Elwes co-starred.

Which actress played the lead inspector in ABC's short-lived drama based on the Women's Murder Club novels?

Angie Harmon led the cast when the drama began in October 2007. ABC confirmed the following May that there would be no second season.

In Maximum Ride, what are the wolf-human hybrids that hunt Max and her friends called?

Erasers kidnap the youngest of the group, six-year-old Angel, to set the first book in motion. Their leader in that story is named Ari.

In The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, the teenage hero hunts down a ranked list of which outlaws?

Aliens on Earth are his quarry, a mission inherited from his murdered parents. His top target is number one on the list, a creature known as The Prayer.

James Patterson wrote The Postcard Killers with Liza Marklund, a crime novelist from which country?

Sweden saw the book first, in January 2010, and it topped the bestseller list there a month later. The English edition followed that August.

James Patterson, the son of an insurance broker and a teacher, was born in which New York city?

Newburgh was home until his family moved to Massachusetts while he was in high school. He went on to study English at Manhattan College.

Which FBI agent and longtime friend of Alex Cross is unmasked as the criminal called the Mastermind?

Kyle Craig is exposed at the end of Roses Are Red as the planner of a string of brutal bank robberies. He later escapes from a maximum-security prison in Colorado.

Which co-author has written the Women's Murder Club novels with James Patterson since 4th of July?

Maxine Paetro had known Patterson since the 1970s, long before they wrote together. Their partnership has since run to more than thirty books.

In Step on a Crack, gunmen take celebrities hostage at a former First Lady's funeral in which New York cathedral?

St. Patrick's is sealed by the gunmen in the middle of the service. The detective sent to negotiate is coping with his wife's terminal illness at the same time.

Which Hawaiian volcano erupts in Eruption, the thriller James Patterson completed from a late author's manuscript?

Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii is the threat. After the novel appeared, Steven Spielberg was reported to be in talks about a film version.

In The President Is Missing, which computer virus threatens all internet-connected devices in the United States?

Dark Ages was built by two hackers for a cyberterrorist, and they warn the US once they grasp what it will do. The fictional president is Jonathan Lincoln Duncan.

Which Evan S. Connell novel about a Kansas City family has James Patterson called his greatest influence?

Mrs. Bridge tells its story in 117 brief episodes, set between the two world wars and seen mostly through the mother's eyes.

James Patterson reportedly set the Women's Murder Club on the West Coast to win readers from which rival?

John Grisham had been leading book sales in the West, by one newspaper's account, so Patterson planted his new series there to gain fans.

James Patterson and Brian Sitts revived which 1930s crimefighter of radio and pulp magazines in a new series of novels?

The Shadow began in 1930 as the mysterious narrator of a radio detective show. The second Patterson and Sitts novel, Circle of Death, appeared in 2023.

Which kidnapper in Along Came a Spider poses as a teacher at a private school to abduct two children?

Gary Soneji later claims to have a split personality, and Cross is allowed to hypnotize him in open court. He stays a threat in the early books, bent on revenge for his arrest.