James Patterson was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh New York, the son of Isabelle, a homemaker and teacher, and Charles Patterson, an insurance broker. The family was working-class and of Irish descent. 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 PhD 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 featuring his character Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist formerly of the 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. He has had more than 114 New York Times bestselling novels,[16] and holds The New York Times record for most #1 New York Times bestsellers by a single author – 67 – which is also a Guinness World Record.
His books have sold approximately 305 million copies worldwide. He retained this position at least until 2013. In 2018, he worked with Stephen David Entertainment on the true crime television series James Patterson's Murder Is Forever.
