James Patterson
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50 free James Patterson trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
James Patterson is one of the bestselling novelists alive, and one of the most argued about. He came to fiction from the advertising business, publishes at a pace few writers could match, and shares many of his covers with a co-author. Along the way he has created detectives, teenage fugitives and middle-school troublemakers that millions of readers follow from one title to the next. This quiz covers both the man and the shelf. There are questions on where he came from and how he works, the Alex Cross thrillers and their screen versions, the Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride and his stories for younger readers, plus the true-crime titles and the well-known names he has written with. It suits longtime fans, reading groups and anyone who has ever picked up one of his paperbacks at an airport. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will learn something even from the ones you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which former U.S. president co-wrote the thriller The President Is Missing with James Patterson?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton and Patterson's thriller sold 250,000 copies in its first week, by its publisher's count. The pair went on to write two more thrillers together.
Q 02Which country music star co-wrote the novel Run, Rose, Run with James Patterson and recorded a companion album?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton co-produced a full album of songs to go with the suspense novel. It was the forty-eighth studio album of her career.
Q 03Which actor played detective Alex Cross in the films Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman played the detective twice, in 1997 and 2001. The films came out of order: the first one adapted the second novel in the series.
Q 04Which horror novelist called James Patterson a terrible writer in a USA Weekend interview?
Stephen King
Stephen King added that Patterson was very successful all the same. Patterson said his own approach was to do the opposite and heap praise on his critic.
Q 05James Patterson finished Eruption from a manuscript left by which late novelist, at the request of his widow Sherri?
Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton left the volcano thriller unfinished when he died. Published in 2024, it became the fourth of his novels to appear after his death.
Q 06In James Patterson's Maximum Ride novels, Max and her lab-made family are 98 percent human and 2 percent what?
Bird
Bird DNA gives Max and her friends working wings, so they can fly. Patterson first tried the idea in two novels for adults before reworking it for teenagers.
Q 07In which city does detective Alex Cross live, having moved in with his grandmother there as a boy?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. is both home and beat for Cross, who worked for the city's police and later the FBI. Several plots pull him into cases involving the president.
Q 08James Patterson's nonfiction book Filthy Rich, later a Netflix documentary series, investigates which financier?
Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein was the subject of Patterson's 2016 book, written with John Connolly and Tim Malloy. The screen version followed in May 2020.
Q 09Which James Patterson novel about animals attacking humans worldwide became a CBS series starring James Wolk?
Zoo
Zoo follows zoologist Jackson Oz as animal attacks grow more coordinated and ferocious. The series ran for three seasons before it was cancelled.
Q 10Early Alex Cross novels such as Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls take their titles from what?
Nursery rhymes
Nursery rhymes supplied the titles, here Little Miss Muffet and Georgie Porgie, until 2006, when the hero's own name began appearing on the covers instead.
Q 11In 2010 James Patterson became the first author to sell more than one million copies in which format?
E-books
E-books put Patterson into Guinness World Records as the first author past a million digital sales. His running tally of bestsellers earned him a second Guinness record.
Q 12Alex Cross, the detective hero of Along Came a Spider, holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in which field?
Psychology
Psychology is the training Cross brings to reading killers' minds. He has worked for both the city police and the FBI.
Q 13Which James Patterson detective solves crimes for the NYPD while raising ten adopted children?
Michael Bennett
Q 21What does Alex Cross call the grandmother who raised him and still lives with his family?
Nana Mama
Nana Mama took Cross in as a boy and went on to help raise his children. Her real name is Regina, and she worked as an English teacher and assistant principal.
Q 22James Patterson's success at managing his own brand became a case study at which business school?
Harvard
Harvard Business School turned his brand management into a case study. Patterson had learned the trade as the North American chief of an advertising agency.
Q 23In Kiss the Girls, a kidnapper holding young women captive in North Carolina goes by which nickname?
Casanova
Casanova trades messages with a second killer on the West Coast, the Gentleman Caller. Cross joins the hunt because his own niece is among the missing.
Michael Bennett is an Irish American New York City detective who first appeared in Step on a Crack. His wife is dying of cancer as that first case unfolds.
Q 14What does sixth grader Rafe plan to do with the code of conduct in Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life?
Break every rule
Break every rule is the whole plan, which Rafe and his friend Leo name Operation R.A.F.E. He opens the campaign by pulling the fire alarm.
Q 15James Patterson's young hero Jamie Grimm, a middle-schooler who uses a wheelchair, is a natural at which line of work?
Comedian
Comedian Jamie Grimm, the hero of I Funny, enters a contest to find the planet's funniest kid comic and wins his way to the state title. He jokes through grief for the family he lost in a car crash.
Q 16James Patterson and Martin Dugard wrote a nonfiction thriller arguing that which Egyptian pharaoh was murdered?
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun is the victim in the pair's 2009 book, which treats the boy pharaoh's death as a crime. It sits on the nonfiction shelf of a writer known for invented killers.
Q 17Who took over as Alex Cross for the 2012 reboot film, facing Matthew Fox as the killer Picasso?
Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry played the detective for director Rob Cohen. The film was meant to restart the series, but critics panned it and it earned less than its $35 million budget.
Q 18The Women's Murder Club novels follow a detective, a reporter and a medical examiner in which city?
San Francisco
San Francisco is where the friends pool their skills to solve murders. A defense attorney, Yuki Castellano, joins the group later in the series.
Q 19James Patterson rose from junior copywriter to North American CEO of which advertising agency?
J. Walter Thompson
J. Walter Thompson hired him in New York after he quit a graduate English program. He wrote fiction in his spare time and left advertising in 1996.
Q 20James Patterson's debut, The Thomas Berryman Number, won which prize for best first novel after thirty-one rejections?
Edgar Award
Edgar Award judges honoured a book that thirty-one publishers had turned down. Little, Brown finally brought it out in 1976.
Q 24Which police inspector, owner of a border collie named Martha, leads James Patterson's Women's Murder Club?
Lindsay Boxer
Lindsay Boxer is a divorced 34-year-old inspector when the series opens. She is promoted to chief of homicide in the second book, her dream since the academy.
Q 25In Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas, a diary later sent to book editor Katie, who is Nicholas to Suzanne?
Her newborn son
Her newborn son is the reader Suzanne has in mind. Katie receives the diary from the poet who has just left her, as his way of explaining why.
Q 26James Patterson handed out $250,000 in holiday bonuses in 2015 to people working in which kind of business?
Bookstores
Bookstores were his cause that year: independent shops shared a further million dollars from him, and public school libraries received even more.
Q 27James Patterson and his wife, Susan, make their home in which Florida town?
Palm Beach
Palm Beach is home for the couple, who have one son. The boy's reluctance to read inspired a website Patterson built to help parents find books children will finish.
Q 28James Patterson voiced himself in an episode called Yokel Chords on which animated series?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons cast him as himself in the same episode as actor Andy Dick, who also played himself. Patterson has turned up as himself in live-action dramas too.
Q 29On which crime drama did James Patterson play himself, joining a mystery novelist's regular poker game?
Castle
Castle sat its title character down at cards with real writers, among them Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly. When one player died in 2010, an empty chair was kept at the table for a year.
Q 30Where did the young James Patterson work night shifts so quiet that he began reading constantly?
A mental hospital
A mental hospital gave him the hours to read, and poet Robert Lowell was among those who checked in. He bought used books in Cambridge for a quarter each.