James Patterson

James Patterson is an American novelist, born on 22 March 1947 in Newburgh, New York. He read English at Manhattan College and then at Vanderbilt University, and worked in advertising at J. Walter Thompson until 1996, when he turned to writing full time. His first novel, “The Thomas Berryman Number”, appeared in 1976. He went on to create the psychologist Alex Cross in “Along Came a Spider” (1993), the Women's Murder Club in “1st to Die” (2001) and the detective Michael Bennett in “Step on a Crack” (2007), as well as the young-adult series “Maximum Ride” (2005) and the “Private” thrillers. He writes most often with a co-author, and publishes in the United States with Little, Brown.