The Patterson Files, part II: a handmaiden is promoted

Even before the Sharp v. Patterson lawsuit made headlines, I’d
decided to do a little sleuthing into the people who give Patterson the help he
needs on his books. Even though it’s only been fairly recently that he’s given
them co-credit, those shadowy writers-for-hire have been working behind the
scenes for quite a while, as an article in Forbes Magazine a couple of years
ago further confirms:

The first time he publicly shared a byline was

in 1996 for a Christmas fable with a golf twist, Miracle on the 17th Green.

His collaborator: Peter de Jonge, a freelance journalist whose name also

appeared on Patterson’s biggest hit, last summer’s The Beach House, a

murder mystery set in the Hamptons,which has sold more than 1 million copies in hardback. This year, in typeface

roughly one-sixth the size of Patterson’s name, “Andrew Gross”

appears on the cover of 2nd Chance, the number-two volume in the Women’s

Murder Club series. Who is Gross? “A writer who lives in

New York,” says a laconic release from

publisher Little, Brown. “He doesn’t really exist,” laughs Patterson.

“Like Simone,” referring to the computer-generated character in the

new Al Pacino movie.

How many of his 23 books had handmaidens? Ask people in

the publishing business and they say, plenty. Patterson doesn’t like discussing

the subject. Pressed on whether he has used writers in the past without

disclosing their names, he offers only a mild rebuttal. “I’m trying to

think if there was anybody else [besides Gross and De Jonge],” he says.

“Nah, for the moment that’s it.” Nor does he seem eager to talk about

acknowledgments inside other books, such as his 2000 paperback _Cradle and

All_, in which he thanks Maxine Paetro, a New York writer and author

of How To Put Your Book Together and Get a Job in Advertising,

for helping him “remodel and restore” the story. As for assistance on

other books? “Let him tell you–I’d feel more comfortable,” says Paetro.

Paetro was also thanked profusely in the acknowledgements of WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1998) and its sequel THE LAKE HOUSE (2003). But the author of several novels including MANSHARE (1987) and WINDFALL (1991) which dealt with the “tribulations of thirtysomething Manhattanites” has now made the leap from simply being acknowledged to actually getting her own byline, as this coming spring, she’ll get credit for writing 4TH of JULY, for which no information is available but presumably something Very Exciting is supposed to happen during that holiday and someone’s supposed to thwart it or something.

As for Gross, it’s interesting that a man who “doesn’t really exist” managed to get married, have kids and live in Westchester, but biographies have a funny way of stretching the truth sometimes.