Patterson's first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), grew out of his reading William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist and Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal. He knew immediately that he wanted to write suspenseful thrillers, reported Bernard and Zaleski in their Publishers Weekly article. He did not, however, feel he could make a living writing, so he took a job as a junior copywriter at J. Walter Thompson, where he has risen to chairman of the North American division. About thirty publishers rejected The Thomas Berryman Number before it was bought by Ned Bradford for Little, Brown. The book was awarded the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel in 1977. Patterson has gone on to write over seventeen novels, most in the suspense-thriller genre.

The "Alex Cross" series, includingAlong Came a Spider (1993), Kiss the Girls (1995), Jack and Jill (1996), Cat and Mouse...