fiction

Patricia Cornwell

Bill Thompson

Many authors, maybe even most authors, labor in obscurity for months or years before finally hitting it big with a bestseller .

But Patricia Cornwell hit it big with her very first book, Post Mortem in 1990. And in the three decades since then, she has sold over 100 million books.

Her wildly popular mysteries feature a medical examiner named Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell based the character loosely on a real life medical examiner for whom she worked briefly in the 1980s.

I first interviewed Patricia Cornwell when Post Mortem was published. The interview you’re about to hear is our second interview, a year later, when her second book, Body of Evidence was published.

So here now, from 1991, Patricia Cornwell.
Patricia Cornwell will be 66 in June. She lives in Massachusetts.

Her latest Kay Scarpetta mystery, Autopsy, the 25th book in the series,was published in 2021.

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James Patterson

Bill Thompson

There’s a pretty fair chance that even if you only own a few books, one of them is probably a James Patterson novel.

He’s written 28 books in the popular series featuring detective Alex Cross. And that’s just one of the series of books has James Patterson writes.

He writes series novels. He writes stand-alone mystery thrillers. He writes books for young readers. He writes children’s books. And he’s written several non-fiction books.

Patterson has sold over 300 million books worldwide. That’s also made him one of America’s richest authors. Several of his books have been made into movies.

I’ve met and interviewed James Patterson several times, including twice for a couple of his nonfiction books before he became a huge best-selling mystery writer.

This interview is from nearly 20 years ago, when he had just written the 8th Alex Cross book, a mystery called for Blind Mice.

So here now, from 2002, James Patterson.

James Patterson is 74 now. He lives in Florida. To date, there have been 28 books in tghe Alex Cross series, the most recent one published in 2020. This year, however, he’s published several books from other series he writes, standalong mysteries, and books for young readers.

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