James Patterson books place at top
Best-selling novelist James Patterson remains the most borrowed author from UK libraries with his taut thrillers and, most famously, his Alex Cross series, with film adaptations of Kiss The Girls and Along Came A Spider. As his latest page-turner, Worst Case, is published, he talks about the inspiration behind his books, his involvement with the National Literacy Trust to encourage children to read, and his life in sunny Florida.
MOST best-selling authors think they're doing pretty well if they write one book a year, but not James Patterson. He has around eight or nine on the go at any one time.
The former advertising executive and now the world's best-selling thriller writer has created a veritable story factory from his office at his luxurious colonial-style mansion in the exclusive enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, where he lives with his wife, Sue, and 11-year-old son, Jack.
He's sold more books in the past five years than John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Dan Brown put together and is currently the most borrowed author from UK libraries.
"I just have all these stories and I want to get them out," says the 62-year-old New Yorker.
Over the years, the creator of the Alex Cross series, two of which - Along Came A Spider and Kiss The Girls - were made into films starring Morgan Freeman, has employed an army of co-writers, an approach which has earned him an estimated 20 million annually.
The Women's Murder Club series, Daniel X series and some of his stand-alone work has been co-written. He has also penned the Maximum Ride series for young adults and some romantic fiction. He published nine original hardcover books in 2009 and will publish at least nine more in 2010.
"At any given time I'm working on four or five manuscripts," he explains. "The way the co-writing works is that I will write the original outline and then the co-writers (who don't live nearby but work remotely) write the first draft and then I write all the subsequent drafts."
A lot of his collaborators are people he's met along the way, who can write good scenes and who will listen to him.
"I don't want someone to come in here the way it is in Hollywood where they're going to give you their take. I don't want somebody's take on these stories. I know what the story is and I want someone who's going to write the scenes that I want."
Not all of his collaborators began their careers as writers, he admits. Some were in advertising and marketing, others simply frustrated writers who needed help up the publishing ladder, including Michael Ledwidge, who has co-written Patterson's latest thriller, Worst Case, featuring police hero Michael Bennett, dedicated detective and father-of-10.
But he insists that in using co-writers there's no dumbing down of the Patterson stories or succinct, page-turning style.
The distinctive book covers with James Patterson in huge, in-your-face font size, with co-authors in smaller, lower key typefaces, reflects his skill as a marketing man. It's no surprise that he closely monitors every aspect of his product, from manuscripts to book jacket.
Patterson grew up in Newburgh, on the outskirts of New York, the son of an insurance executive and a teacher. He began writing detective books while working as an advertising copywriter.
He wrote his first thriller at 25, The Thomas Berryman Number, which was initially rejected by 26 publishers but which eventually won the prestigious Edgar best first mystery in the US, while he was still in advertising.
"I read The Day Of The Jackal, which I really liked. I thought, I'm not capable of writing Ulysses but maybe I could write something like The Day Of The Jackal."
His advertising experience hasn't been wasted. When Along Came A Spider was published, Patterson took control of the book's design and marketing, paid for the TV advertisements with his own money and redesigned the book's cover. He's never looked back.
He had always been driven, but never more so than early on in his career, when a long-term girlfriend, Jane Blanchard, was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She died two years later and he has described the tragedy as the defining event of his life.
"I was just stunned by how brave she was. It was an incredible lesson. She just made the decision that whatever time she had left, she was going to live those years rather than grieve for herself.
"We were lucky in the sense that a lot of people never find someone they want to be with that much. We had six years before she got sick and two-and-a-half years after that. After Jane died, I really couldn't write for a couple of years."
So he threw himself into work and went from copywriter to chairman of advertising company J Walter Thompson in just four years, before turning to full-time writing.
His advertising experience has made him very aware that there's a reader, he reflects.
"If you're really writing serious fiction, there's a chance you'll think, this is about me and my vision, not about readers. If you're writing commercial fiction you are aware that there's an audience."
His latest thriller involves children of wealthy families being kidnapped by a killer, but Patterson says that his scary ideas never cause him to think about his own security.
"Stuff can happen but you hope that it never does. I don't worry about it.
“It's strange because this past weekend I had a speaking engagement at an electronics show in Las Vegas and at the event they insisted on having bodyguards for me. It was spooky."
His multi-millionaire status (he also has a house in New York) hasn't stopped some critics from being sniffy about the literary merit of his books. The chapters tend to be short (most are around three pages long) and the narrative often lacks descriptive passages - but Patterson's not after the Man Booker prize.
"That's like saying no-one should ever go to a James Bond movie, that they should only ever go and see serious alternative films." he bristles. "Both are very valuable in people's lives. If James Patterson and James Bond have a place in people's lives it's fine and dandy.
"I tell good stories. They are clear, very readable and it's not the easiest thing in the world to keep people glued to the page.
“People just assume it's easy, but if it was easy a lot of people would do it and I don't read too many books that keep me glued to the page."
Patterson always cuts to the chase, keeps the action flowing and the narrative tight. One critic said reading a Patterson book 'feels just like you're reading a Bruce Willis film'. That about sums it up.
More film adaptations may be on the cards - Patterson has co-written the script of a story of Alex Cross when he was younger, although it won't feature Morgan Freeman.
"There's a guy, Idris Elba, from England, who's very good. It'll be a younger African American, unless someone like Denzel pops up."
He's also working on a screenplay to bring Michael Bennett to the big screen and a series called Private, about a sophisticated private investigation company.
There will also be more books out this year.
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