Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Richard North Patterson Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Richard North Patterson

Richard North Patterson

Richard North Patterson Biography

Richard North Patterson was born on February 22, 1947 in Berkeley, California. He grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1968. In 1971 he graduated from Case Western Reserve Law School and went on to serve as an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Ohio. He was a partner in several of the country's leading law firms and also served as the liaison for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to the Watergate Special Prosecutor.

He started writing at the age of 29 when he had completed law school. He began his first book, The Lasko Tangent, as part of a creative writing course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the category "Best First Mystery Novel (American)" in 1980.

In 1993, he retired from the practice of law to devote himself to writing. He is chairman of the National Governing Board for Common Cause, and has served on boards of several advocacy groups dealing with gun violence, political reform, and reproductive rights.

He lives in San Francisco and on Martha's Vineyard with his partner, Dr Nancy Clair. In addition to winning the Edgar Allan Poe Award, he is also the recipient of the 1995 International Grand Prix de Littérature Policière (the most prestigious award for crime and detective fiction in France).



Partial Bibliography, to date :

Christopher Paget series
The Lasko Tangent (1979)
Degree of Guilt (1992)
Eyes of a Child (1994)


Novels
The Outside Man (1981)
Escape the Night (1983)
Private Screening (1985)
Caroline Masters (1995), published in the UK as Final Judgement
Silent Witness (1996)
No Safe Place (1998)
Dark Lady (1999)
Protect and Defend (2000)
Balance of Power (2003)
Conviction (2005)
Exile (2007)
The Race (2007)
Eclipse (2009)
The Spire (late 2009)
In the Name of Honor (2010)
The Devil's Light (2011)
Fall From Grace (2012)
Loss of Innocence (2013)
Eden in Winter (2014)
Fever Swamp (2017)

Richard North Patterson's website

This bio was last updated on 06/16/2017. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Richard North Patterson discusses Eclipse, set in a fictitious West African country, which is loosely based upon the life and death of Nigerian human rights and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

You acknowledge in your afterword that Eclipse is based loosely upon the life and death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria's courageous human rights and environmental activist who was hung by the country's brutal dictator fifteen years ago. For those of us who don't remember that story, please tell us a bit about him and why he remains an important figure.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a gifted novelist who created a force unique to Nigeria: a mass nonviolent movement among his ethnic group, the Ogoni, to fight the environmental and human rights abuses caused by the alliance between the oil industry and Nigeria's corrupt autocracy. While the extraction of oil from the Niger delta enriched the government and the oil companies, it left the delta's people more impoverished and their lands and water despoiled. Saro-Wiwa's defiance ultimately led to his execution in 1994 by the country's kleptocratic dictator, General Suni Abacha, after a trial based on dubious charges that Saro-Wiwa had instigated the death of several Ogoni chiefs. A tragic coda is that although Saro-Wiwa was widely admired in the West, the oil-dependent democracies that profess their devotion to human rights did little to save him.

The tragedy of Saro-...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Richard North Patterson at BookBrowse
Loss of Innocence jacket Fall from Grace jacket The Devil's Light jacket In the Name of Honor jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Richard North Patterson but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Eclipse

    Try:
    Half of a Yellow Sun
    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • Sefi Atta

    Sefi Atta

    Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964 and currently divides her time between the United States, England and Nigeria. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England, a Certified Public Accountant in the United ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Eclipse

    Try:
    A Bit of Difference
    by Sefi Atta

We recommend 22 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.