James Patterson

James Patterson was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York.

He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Manhattan College and an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt University.

Patterson was a Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt when he took a job as an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson. After he retired from advertising in 1996, he devoted his time to writing. His greatest influence, he said later, was probably Evan S. Connell’s 1959 debut novel Mrs. Bridge. In 1976, he published his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number. The novels feature his character Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist formerly of Washington DC. Metropolitan Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation who now works as a private psychologist and government consultant, are his most popular and the top-selling U.S. detective series of the 2010s. Patterson has written more than 200 novels since 1976.