Or will his ghost writer cartel keep his name on the bestsellers lists until the sun explodes?

If you’ve somehow never heard of prolific best-selling author James Patterson, head on down to your local library and just look for the Patterson Section. It’ll usually be its own wing, maybe a garage, or even a seperate building altogether.

My local library used to be a video store, and they actually keep all of Patterson’s books back in what was once the adult video section. Complete with privacy curtain and sticky carpet. I always forget when I visit in my trench coat and sunglasses that this is no longer the place where I can rent my well-used copy of Spirit of Seventy Sex, but instead a respectable section offering cheap and sometimes titillating disposable literary entertainment. Certainly not porn.

In the Patterson Section you’ll find sophisticated, thought-provoking titles. Titles like Cat & Mouse, Jack & Jill, Pop Goes the Weasel, Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Four Blind Mice, Mary Mary, and Rock-A-Bye Baby. Okay I made the last one up, but basically think of any nursery rhyme you can and it’s likely Patterson’s written a door-stop-sized thriller with it as the title. And that’s just in the Alex Cross series. That is Alex Cross, the cool black detective who bangs hot white women, written by Patterson, a white dude born during the Truman administration. They say to write what you know, but I guess there are exceptions.

The Alex Cross series also has numerous and very clever “cross”-themed titles. Such as Double Cross, Cross Country, I, Alex Cross, Cross Fire, Cross My Heart, Deadly Cross, and Triple Cross. Man that detective has some bad luck. He’s getting double-crossed AND triple-crossed. At least he has all those hot white women to compensate.

Patterson has a veritable smorgasbord of literature beyond the Alex Cross series. So much that it’s practically impossible to keep track of it all. He’s got The Women’s Murder Club, Maximum Ride, The Shadow Thrillers, NYPD Red, and a mess of standalone thrillers. His most famous work is Along Came a Spider, the 1993 bestseller made into the 2001 film starring Morgan Freeman and some lady who looks like Sharon Stone if you squint hard enough.

Along Came a Spider is actually a decent book, though it pales in comparison to what was obviously its inspiration — The Silence of the Lambs, the classic 1988 thriller by Thomas Harris. That and probably Basic Instinct (1992). I read Spider years ago when I suddenly became vexed by the question of when exactly James Patterson threw in the towel on being a real author and decided instead to become the book factory equivalent of Sysco, pumping out infantile titles with fill-in-the-blank plots and characters plucked out of ’80s soap operas. I gave up trying to find out, but I think it was somewhere between Kiss the Girls (2000) and Double Cross (2007).

James Patterson is, of course, known for more than just his obsession with killing the Amazon rainforest to print his books. He’s famous for, or perhaps infamous for, his massive cartel of co-authors and ghostwriters. Not to mention his diverse breadth of literature. The man will literally write about anything. He’s got a book he just released in March, 2023 titled Elephant Goes Potty, which “captures the struggle — and delight! — of potty training.”

Elephant Goes Potty aside, nowadays it’s rare you ever see a title on the shelves with only his name on the cover. He’s teamed up with former president Bill Clinton to write not one, but two political thrillers. The President’s Daughter and The President is Missing. Also look for The Blue Dress Caper coming this fall, though I hear the plot for that one blows.

He’s written a book called Run, Rose, Run with Dolly Parton. Not to be confused with Rose Madder, by Stephen King, or Rabbit, Run, by John Updike. or Run Lola Run, the 1998 German film about some chick with red hair.

This June Patterson’s got a book coming out called Eruption, which he co-wrote with Michael Crichton. Which is amazing considering the Jurassic Park author died in 2008. But why stop there? Why doesn’t Patterson team up with H.P. Lovecraft next? Maybe write a title like Cthulu Joins Black Lives Matter. Or maybe a self-help motivational book with Ernest Hemingway, Life is Worth Living. Or maybe a fun family adventure about siblings with George Orwell. Big Brother and I, or something. The possibilities for collabs are endless.

There’s no question James Patterson knows how to pump out content. I don’t begrudge the man for having the same fevered enthusiasm for writing as a pervert lurking outside a sorority house and whacking it in the bushes. I don’t care that the guy writes like A.I. before A.I. writing was a thing. Good for him.

I do wonder, though, that for all his output, if he’ll be remembered in 50 years in the same manner as Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. You may chuckle at such comparisons, but Dickens was dismissed in his day for churning out simplistic melodramas. Most commerically successful authors are looked at askew by the literary etablishment. And what about contemporaries of Patterson’s like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling? Both locks, I’d say, for standing the test of time. Patterson may have built an empire out of the literary equivalent of hot air, but will anything that he’s done be worth revisiting in half a century? Will his mountain of books add up to a molehill of memory?

Patterson’s prolificacy also brings up the age old struggle many artists have over quality versus quantity. Thomas Harris has only written six novels, but he’ll always be remembered for introducing the world to Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. Ira Levin wrote only a handful of books mainly before middle-age, but he introduced the term “The Stepford Wife,” and Rosemary’s Baby will probably always be a timeless classic. Patterson has done nothing close to that. Will anyone be thinking about Alex Cross in even ten years?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Patterson is reviving Crichton himself, who died over 15 years ago. Perhaps someone else will come along and “co-write” a book with Patterson in 50 years, reintroducing him to future masses. Maybe the New York Times Bestseller’s List of 2074 will bear the illustrious title of Elephant Goes Potty, Again. One can only wish.