James Patterson et al

James Patterson is certainly a very prolific author. However, his later books are actually written by others. He just seems to endorse them. This means that you don't get continuity. Most avid readers get to know the style of each author and get used to their format.
Personally, I found his earlier books too sentimental. The stories were good and the detective work, but I was put off by the family stuff.

I used to love James Pattison but got fed up with them in the end. I found his very short chapters really annoying! I haven't read many of his collaborations but from what I have read, some of been good, some of them not. As you are not buying them, try one from the library and see what you think.

I liked his collaboration with Dolly Parton, Run Rose Run

Alex Cross and Women’s Murder Club series are the best . I do like him . He wrote all his early to mid tome books by himself. Many of his later books are co-authored and are not nearly so good I find .

Thanks for all the information, very useful.

I think I’ll try the Alex Cross series and then the Women’s Murder Club although I often find it very difficult to get older books from the library.

I can see some charity shop visiting on the horizon. Love it when I have a particular reason to browse in a charity shop, the only problem being that I can’t walk past the jigsaw section without buying one 😂

Aely

I too liked the early Alex Cross books but I now avoid Patterson's formulaic word-mill offerings.

I popped onto this thread to say exactly that. The earlier ones were great, but they've been formulaic for some time now.

try this site, I use it all the time

www.fantasticfiction.com/p/james-patterson/

It goes back to 1993 for J Patterson in order and series

I too liked the early Alex Cross books but I now avoid Patterson's formulaic word-mill offerings.

Maybe nobody admits to reading Janes Patterson. I used to run a small English Library here in France and his books were popular, however I did notice that people moved on to other authors after a few Patterson books. Like Susan56 I still read the Women's Murder Club series but they are definitely not as good now as they were.

Prolific doesn’t even come close does it?

www.bookseriesinorder.com/james-patterson/

However, I see from the Wiki page that:

In 2017, digital humanities scholars Simon Fuller and James O'Sullivan published research showing that Patterson does not do much actual writing when collaborating with other authors.

In that case, perhaps start with those he wrote alone, the Alex Cross series which began in 1992 with Along Came a Spider as Grandmabatty mentions.

I haven’t read any as I’m not keen on thrillers so I can’t vouch for how good they are, which would only be my subjective opinion anyway.

I think his earlier books were much better than the more recent ones.
I agree that the Alex Cross books are some of the best.I still like the Women’s Murder Club and the Private series also the Michael Bennett books as they follow the same key characters in each series.
I have given up on some of his books which aren’t in these series as I agree with GrandmaBatty that they have become quite formulaic.

I have read James Patterson in the past but not for a number of years. I felt his novels became formulaic and I lost interest. If I remember correctly, he wrote Along came a spider which was an early one and I enjoyed it. The Alex Cross books were best, in my opinion