Special Interview: A Conversation with Best-Selling Author James Patterson

Summary

Kill List Podcast: Special Interview with Best-Selling Author James Patterson

Hosted by Carl Miller

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Introduction

In a special episode of Kill List, Carl Miller ventures beyond the gripping true crime narratives to engage in an insightful conversation with James Patterson, the best-selling author renowned for his Alex Cross series. Released on November 21, 2024, this episode delves into the intersections between Patterson's fictional detective work and the real-life investigation surrounding the dark web's kill list uncovered by Miller and his team.

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Meeting James Patterson

The episode kicks off with Carl introducing James Patterson, highlighting his impressive career:

Carl Miller [00:00]: "It is the one and only James Patterson. His Alex Cross series began in the 1990s with Along Came a Spider and it's now getting its own Amazon Prime series, Cross, which is available to stream."

James Patterson is celebrated for his creation of Alex Cross, a character who embodies both a detective and a forensic psychologist, making him a multifaceted and relatable hero in the crime genre.

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Inspiration Behind Alex Cross

James Patterson shares the genesis of Alex Cross, drawing from his personal experiences:

James Patterson [06:14]: "I worked my way through college at one of the best mental hospitals. I was an aide there. This was McLean in Belmont, Massachusetts... I really got interested in that area."

Patterson emphasizes Alex Cross's intellectual prowess and psychological depth, distinguishing him from typical detectives by showcasing his ability to solve cases through intellect rather than mere physical prowess.

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Crafting Compelling Villains

A significant portion of their discussion centers on creating formidable antagonists:

James Patterson [08:47]: "The key to the villains... it has to be a worthy villain. So Alex is very smart, but if the villain isn't a worthy villain, it just doesn't work."

Patterson underscores the importance of villains possessing a blend of madness, instability, and intelligence, making them both unpredictable and intellectually challenging for Cross to apprehend.

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Parallels Between Alex Cross and Kill List Investigation

Carl draws connections between the investigative challenges faced in Kill List and those navigated by Alex Cross:

Carl Miller [10:12]: "...deciding or judgments, always against the clock, like, always very urgently and at a tempo that was being dictated by the adversary in many ways, not by us."

James Patterson [09:25]: "It's never as simple in terms of what might be motivating the killer."

Both real-life investigators and fiction writers grapple with understanding the multifaceted motivations behind criminal actions, whether driven by money, control, or deeper psychological issues.

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Challenges with Law Enforcement

The conversation highlights the obstacles faced when collaborating with police forces:

Carl Miller [15:18]: "We entered this very old fashioned waiting room full of banners with different campaigns against gender violence... They were laughing, laughing."

James Patterson [15:59]: "It's like any other profession. You're going to run into really good ones. You're going to run some that are awful."

Patterson acknowledges the mixed experiences one can have with law enforcement, recognizing both cooperative and obstructive behaviors. This mirrors the Kill List team's struggles when law enforcement doubted the legitimacy of their findings.

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Stepping Outside Institutional Boundaries

Both Cross and the Kill List team often find themselves operating beyond traditional channels to achieve their goals:

Carl Miller [21:02]: "Effect on your family, the effect on you, the effect of making a mistake."

James Patterson [21:49]: "One of the reasons that Alex Cross is so successful is his ability to balance work and personal life, especially with his family being threatened."

This dynamic underscores the emotional and ethical complexities faced when pursuing justice, whether in fiction or real investigations.

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Character Development and Family Dynamics

Patterson emphasizes the significance of family in Alex Cross's life, adding depth to the character:

James Patterson [26:35]: "People like... Alex's connection to his family, and they identify with it."

The Alex Cross series not only focuses on thrilling investigations but also on personal struggles, making Cross a relatable and enduring character for readers and viewers alike.

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Adapting to Modern Realities

The discussion touches on the evolution of storytelling from Patterson's books to the Amazon Prime series:

James Patterson [20:09]: "The series on Amazon is closer to reality in terms of the kinds of things that a cop has to go through in modern day Washington, DC."

The adaptation reflects a shift towards more realistic portrayals of law enforcement challenges, aligning the narrative closer to contemporary societal issues.

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Notable Clips and Insights

Throughout the episode, Carl shares clips from both the Kill List investigation and the Alex Cross series to illustrate their points:

1. Elena's Testimony [10:56 - 11:36]:

   • Elena: "...he had rented a room where he had weapons and munitions... He decided not to do it himself."

2. Police Skepticism in Spain [15:18 - 15:54]:

   • Reporter: "The Dark Web hired someone to kill her. What is this? It's a science fiction movie."
   • James Patterson: "Those creeps."

3. Alex Cross Interrogation [24:54 - 25:37]:

   • Alex Cross: "You thought you were special."
   • James Patterson: "It was one of the highest testing series they've ever done, which is cool."

These clips offer a tangible connection between the challenges depicted in the podcast and those in Patterson's literary and televised worlds.

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Navigating Ethical Dilemmas

Carl poses a critical question regarding the ethical decisions faced during the Kill List investigation:

Carl Miller [27:15]: "...figuring out what to do with these kill orders... how to tell the targets, how to approach law enforcement."

James Patterson [27:47]: "Life in general... it's just a series of solving problems."

Patterson likens the investigative process to a continuous series of problem-solving, reinforcing the notion that both fiction and reality require adaptability and resilience.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the enduring appeal of the Alex Cross series and the shared experiences between James Patterson's storytelling and the Kill List investigation.

James Patterson [28:04]: "Pretty much every chapter there's a problem to be solved. It's just new problems and opportunities."

Carl and Patterson commend each other's approaches to tackling complex issues, whether in writing or real-life investigations, highlighting the universal challenges of seeking truth and justice.

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Final Thoughts

This special interview seamlessly blends the worlds of true crime investigation and crime fiction, offering listeners a profound understanding of both the Kill List operation and the creative processes behind James Patterson's beloved Alex Cross series. Through engaging dialogue and shared experiences, the episode underscores the intricate dance between reality and storytelling in the pursuit of uncovering the truth.

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Listen to More:

• Kill List continues to release new episodes weekly on Tuesdays, exploring diverse cases and deepening the investigation into the dark web's kill list.
• Follow Kill List on the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or join Wondery+ for early, ad-free access.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content sections to focus on the substantive discussions between Carl Miller and James Patterson.

Transcript

[Carl Miller]

Wandary subscribers can binge all episodes of Chaolist early and ad free. Join Wondry in the Wandary app or on Apple podcasts. Hey there, it's Carl. Kill List continues with new episodes dropping weekly on Tuesdays, each of which takes a deep dive into cases from across the investigation and across the world. But today, we've got something different. It's a special interview I recorded with James Patterson, the bestselling author of the Alex Cross series. I hope you enjoy it. And don't forget to come back on Tuesday for the next episode of Kill List. We'll be taking you to Wisconsin, where a bitter feud threatens to tear a family apart. The series tells the story of a secret dark web kill list, how we got hold of it, and our race against time to warn its targets. It was an investigation that began with a tiny little vulnerability on a darknet murder for hire site that allowed us to intercept the kill orders in secret that were being sent to the site. The authors of these orders, they had no idea that we were able to see them. But we could. There's one guy, and I only have.

[James Patterson]

His name and the city he lives in.

[Carl Miller]

How can I hire a killer to kill him?

[James Patterson]

I want her to be killed.

[Alex Cross]

But it should seem she is dead.

[Carl Miller]

Because of accident, not by murder. Seeking house to be burned down with occupants inside, no survivors. What started there on the darknet soon expanded all over the world. Zurich, Beverly Hills, Berlin. A small fishing village in Spain, a Wisconsin suburb. And it put us in contact with police forces, the FBI, Interpol. But perhaps the weirdest and most disturbing part of all of this was having to comb through the kill orders themselves, having to read the incredibly specific instructions that were sent, and and desperately trying to decipher if there were any clues in them that could tell us who was writing them, who was putting these orders onto the site. In many of these moments, it genuinely did feel like we had stepped outside of reality and into the pages of some sort of detective novel. And that's why I could not be more excited to be speaking today with the man who practically invented the modern day crime mystery novel. He has sold more than 400 million books. He is one of the best selling authors of all time. It is the one and only James Pattinson. His Alex Cross series began in the 1990s with Along Came a Spider and it's now getting its own Amazon prime series, Cross, which is available to stream.

[James Patterson]

What do you do, Alex?

[Alex Cross]

I'm a detective.

[James Patterson]

You mean you're a cop?

[Alex Cross]

Metro pd. We join the force together. No I got it.

[James Patterson]

You the doctor.

[Alex Cross]

PhD psychology.

[James Patterson]

Let's see how long you last.

[Alex Cross]

But you can call me Detective Alex Cross.

[Carl Miller]

Patson also has a new Alex Cross novel out this month, the House of Cross. And today we're going to be drawing parallels between Patterson's work across all those books and what we experienced when we were making the Kill List. We'll talk about where he gets his inspiration from, and also we talk about how Alex Cross deals with all the different kinds of problems and challenges and hurdles that he faces when he's trying to catch his own murderers. That's coming up next on Kill List. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything.

[James Patterson]

Going up during inflation, we thought we'd.

[Carl Miller]

Bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Thing Mint Mobile unlimited premium wireless.

[Carl Miller]

30. 30 bid to get 30. Get 20. 20. Better get 20.

[James Patterson]

20. Better to get 15. 15, 15, 15.

[Carl Miller]

Just 15 bucks a month.

[Alex Cross]

Sold.

[Carl Miller]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes. You detailed.

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[Carl Miller]

From Wondery and novel. I'm Carl Miller and this is Kill List. James, it's such an honor to speak to you. Very warm welcome to the Kill List.

[James Patterson]

Thank you. Thank you. The only thing I want to know is am I on the kill list? Because this is frightening for me and I'd like you to straighten that out for me.

[Carl Miller]

You are not. I actually did confirm. I genuinely did. I searched for whether you were in any of the files that we got. And I'm happy to say definitively you're not. And neither is Alex Cross.

[James Patterson]

Phew. I know that I don't have to worry about dying during our talk together.

[Carl Miller]

Yeah. So, James, question number one. You've been writing Alex Cross series for 30 years now, and can you just kind of introduce us to Alex Cross and the initial inspiration behind him? Because he's not your typical detective, is he? He's someone who is also a kind of forensic psychologist. You know, a PhD as well as a detective.

[James Patterson]

Well, a piece of it is I worked my way through college at one of the best mental hospitals. I was an aide there. This was McLean in Belmont, Massachusetts. Really, really good hospital. A lot of staff out of Harvard. And so I got to study a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists and mental patients. A lot of firsthand experience. You get to talk to people who are having problems all day. And so I really got interested in that area. So that was a piece of it. A big piece of it. And one of the reasons that Morgan Freeman wanted to play him is that Alex solves stuff with his head more than his fists. One of the things in the books, and it's also true about the series on prime, is Alex is always the smartest person in the room. And when I started the series, Hollywood, in those days, pretty much every black person other than Sidney Poitier that was in a movie had a boombox on their shoulder. And I'm going, like, that's not accurate. That's not the way it is. And I started writing about Alice Cross. You know, I grew up in a town that was. It was on the Hudson River, a pretty large black population. My grandparents owned this very small restaurant, and the chef was a black woman. And when I was a little kid, she was having problems with her husband, and she just moved in with us. And I just. I loved her family and the spirit of them. And they were smart and they were funny, and the music was good and the food was good. And I preferred being with her family than being with my family. And that's, I think, a little bit of where the Cross family comes from in the books.

[Carl Miller]

So, James, how do you get into the heads of these serial and pattern murderers? Cause that seems to be kind of one of the big kind of arcs that stretches throughout each of your novels is the way that Alex can kind of get into the kind of interior worlds of these people who kind of, by Definition have such a kind of an unfamiliar kind of internal life to the rest of us?

[James Patterson]

Well, yeah, the key to the villains, it's an interesting thing. Somebody in Hollywood, a very famous Hollywood person, said the key to all great stories is a great villain. And the person that said that was Walt Disney. And it certainly is from my books, anyway. And it has to be a worthy villain. So Alex is very smart, but if the villain isn't a worthy villain, it just doesn't work. You know, I write with an outline, but I'm not a slave to the outline. It's always going to change. Things are going to surprise me. I'm going to fall in love with the character. I'm going to like a villain, and the villain will survive and go to the next book, et cetera.

[Carl Miller]

And by worthy villain, they, of course, have to be kind of intellectually formidable.

[James Patterson]

Yeah, it can be physical. Just can be. Their madness is interesting and there's some cleverness to it. They just have to be somebody where you go, like, I don't know how Alix will triumph here.

[Carl Miller]

Well, this brings us to kind of one of the first crossovers between Alex Cross and Kill. This, or at least possible crossovers. And that's where we found ourselves to be, where we were trying to, in our own ways, transport ourselves into the minds of the people that were trying to have another person killed. I think probably in a way that was similar to Alec's Cross, you think.

[James Patterson]

You can stop him?

[Alex Cross]

I know I can because I know him better than he knows himself.

[Carl Miller]

When we were combing through these kill orders we were intercepting, we were kind of obsessing about how serious they were. Like, did they have the means to do it? Might they take matters into their own hands? And each and every time we were having to make those kinds of determinations or decisions or judgments, always against the clock, like, always very urgently and at a tempo that was being dictated by the adversary in many ways, not by us.

[James Patterson]

Yeah.

[Carl Miller]

So we've got a clip to play you that hopefully brings this to life a little bit. The voice that you're about to hear is from a woman called Elena. And it was her estranged husband that wired Bitcoin to the site that we were broken into in order to have her murdered. And we reached her in time to warn her.

[James Patterson]

Thank God. Thank God.

[Carl Miller]

But it was only later that we realized what the husband might have been capable of. We're about to say goodbye when Elena remembers a detail about the police investigation she wants me to know.

[Elena]

They found that he had rented A room where he had weapons and munitions. It looks like he was actually thinking about doing it himself.

[Carl Miller]

My God. Where is this room in relation to where you are?

[Elena]

Oh, quite near, actually.

[Carl Miller]

Oh, my God. That is absolutely terrifying.

[Elena]

I think he was planning it, and then in the end, he decided it was too dangerous. They would suspect him, you know, if something happened to me. So in the end, he decided not to do it himself.

[James Patterson]

Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah, of course. No, of course they would suspect the husband.

[Carl Miller]

Does Alex Cross ever struggle to have people in danger, believe him, that they're in danger? Because one of the things that we really struggled with, actually, was to convince Elena to leave her home.

[James Patterson]

Sure.

[Carl Miller]

You know, to actually take positive action to make herself safer.

[James Patterson]

Part of it is always, you know, with my books is exactly that and figuring out what's going to work best for the story. There are some of the Cross stories where that would be an element. Motivation is a big thing.

[Carl Miller]

I think there was probably two layers of motivation, really. And let me put them to you. Cause I wonder how they interact in your own villains.

[James Patterson]

Sure.

[Carl Miller]

On the surface, it was money. So Elena's husband stood to lose a lot of money from this divorce. He simply didn't want to. And actually, when he was dragged into court later on, that was the reason that he gave. But really, I think what drove him and actually drove many of the people, dozens of them, that we ended up learning about the perpetrators was actually something a bit deeper and more subtle, and that was control. I think they often were trying to kill the target because they were trying to gain control back. You know, they were losing it somehow. Like either the person was going away, the marriage was breaking apart.

[James Patterson]

Yeah, the control, that's absolutely. That's a motive for sure. And then the hatred, it can reveal that the person really has some. Some real flaw and unbelievable flaws that the killer has. But I always go to the four, five, six different things. It's never as simple in terms of what might be motivating the killer.

[Carl Miller]

I think when I read your books, James, I can often see this in the villains. And that's this kind of combination which I saw so often with the perpetrators of the kill list. Between, on the one hand, being quite delusional and unstable and unpredictable, but then also, like, somehow forensic and calculating and rational in another. And it often feels like that combination is what makes these people so dangerous that they're able to be both at the same time. And how often are your villains hiding in plain sight? Cause that was another thing that we realized is that Actually, they managed to maintain this kind of veneer of respectability.

[James Patterson]

You know, I don't remember how many, but there have been several books where I've written and we know who the villain is, but we can't prove it. We know, and they're really bad and they're doing bad things, but we just can't prove it. There was one of the cross books where he was a diplomat.

[Carl Miller]

Oh, really?

[James Patterson]

So he had diplomatic immunity, so they couldn't go after him even though they really believed that he was a murderer, but they couldn't go after him because he had diplomatic immunity in dc.

[Carl Miller]

All right, well, we're going to move onwards. We've got a second clip, James, to play you.

[James Patterson]

Okay?

[Carl Miller]

And this is really looking at a moment in our investigation when we were really struggling not actually to get the targets to take us seriously this time, but the police. Okay, so we'd been time after time kind of hitting these walls with the police, which actually really surprised me where they just simply did not think that the evidence we were presenting was real and in fact actually began to get increasingly skeptical and suspicious of us. So I wanna play a clip from the show where one of our reporters is in Spain and we've gone with the target into a police station physically to report the threat.

[Reporter]

We entered this very old fashioned waiting room full of banners with different campaigns against gender violence. And that's when we heard the police inside talking about the case. The Dark Web.

[James Patterson]

Whoa.

[Reporter]

The Dark Web hired someone to kill her. What is this? It's a science fiction movie. And they were laughing, laughing.

[James Patterson]

Those creeps.

[Carl Miller]

Does that surprise you, James? Because it kind of often feels that.

[James Patterson]

No, no, it's all over the lot with the police. The police are either going to get in the way or they're going to help or do both. And you know, look, it's like any other profession. You're going to run into really good ones. You're going to run some that are awful. And, and a lot of times the police, they'll get there, you know, and it's this person or no, no, no, no, get out of here. This couldn't happen this way, you know, so the cop, they would definitely have some questions and want some proof and they might well laugh at it. They might like, this is, you know, no, this would never happen, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're going to convince them that they're wrong.

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[Carl Miller]

It seems that Alex Cross has to not only kind of have colleagues, obviously that get in the way actively for whatever reason, but also has to kind of step outside of the normal channels and sometimes rules in order to have effective investigations occurring. I've just finished reading Jack and Jill. That's a story about how he's being dragged into a series of high profile murders of primarily white celebrities in D.C. but there's another serial killer killing black children in a much poorer and nobody cares. And nobody cares. Yeah, and he has to kind of begin that kind of shadow investigation, doesn't he?

[James Patterson]

Yeah.

[Carl Miller]

So when Cross is struggling to get the police to say, believe him or the institution to work with him, like, how does he tend to kind of deal with that?

[James Patterson]

One of the reasons that I set the cross series in D.C. is that Alex would have a number of of agencies to deal with. So he's got the FBI, he's got the CIA, he's got the dea, he's got, you know, you name it, they're there. But Alex or any police person is going to have to deal with bureaucracies in the case of a lot of the books, it can be the bureaucracy inside the Washington Police Department. It can be the bureaucracy at the FBI, it can be the bureaucracy at the CIA. It's not just bureaucracy. Sometimes it's just one of these organizations has secrets they don't want out there. And every time he has to work with an agency, he's got to convince them. A lot of them, they don't really want to work with the D.C. police. And even when he has a case that he wants to follow, a lot of times, you know, at the top, they don't want to follow it. You mentioned in one of the cases where, you know, the police department didn't really want to deal with deaths of black kids. Now that's changed, I think, currently, but that was an issue getting the police a lot of times to deal with crime in the black parts of Washington.

[Carl Miller]

Do you think the way that you've thought about and written about the police since the 90s has changed at all? Or is this 100% really, how's it evolved?

[James Patterson]

Yeah, and that's a big thing in terms of the difference between Alex Cross in the books and Alex Cross in the prime series. In the series, Alex is much more relevant and real. You know, I don't write realism for the most part. I mean, Alex Cross in your career, you're not gonna be solving a different murder every week. It's kind of crazy that this doesn't happen. So it's not realistic. The series on Amazon is closer to reality in terms of the kinds of things that a cop has to go through in modern day Washington, dc. It's a tough place. There's a lot of distrust of the police. Alex in the series, especially in this first series, he's done something that's beyond the pale. And he's struggling with it. And he struggles with it through all the episodes.

[Carl Miller]

That was exactly my next question, which is the implications for Alex when he does step outside of institutions. Because where we found ourselves was in a place that I think felt very lonely. Because on the one hand, you've got the people running the site, the cyber criminals, you know, and they were scary. You've got the perpetrators that we obviously were desperately trying to stay hidden from. But then you also had the police that seemed in many cases to be quite suspicious of us and were telling the targets that we'd set the site up, or we were scammers, or we were just after a story. And I think kind of stepping outside of institutional boundaries. In our case of journalists, I think In Alex's case of a detective, suddenly you kind of lose your compass. It's kind of hard to tell exactly what the right thing to do is.

[James Patterson]

Yes, and also with Alex. And a big part of the success of Alex Cross is, look, we, not all of us, but a lot of us have that issue of balancing our work life with our personal life or our family life. And for Alex, that's enormous because his job as a cop, it's life threatening. It's all the time. And his family has been threatened several times during the series. And there's another threat in the prime series is another threat to his family. But he has to balance that. He has to protect his family. So that's a piece of the puzzle. Whenever there's an Alice Cross movie or book, and that's always a big deal.

[Carl Miller]

When you look at true crime cases for inspirational, for research, are there elements of it that you dispense with because it's actually not useful to you as a crime writer?

[James Patterson]

Occasionally you look at a case like the American football player with the Patriots and you just go like, oh, my God, this guy. Like a major football player and he was a murderer on the side. That kind of thing. You suddenly go, well, that could be a novel too, because it's so over the top.

[Carl Miller]

I think you touched on this a little bit. But in making the series, was it. Is it introducing a kind of darker realism than you would have in the books?

[James Patterson]

I don't know that it's darker, it's more relevant, it's closer to reality. And I talked the showrunner, Ben Watkins, he and I talked a lot about one, that he wanted to write new stories, and I was all for that. One of the things I don't like is when somebody wants to take over one of my series and all they do is lay out, like, what that book was. I don't really love that. I think it worked fine with the Long Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls with Morgan Freeman, partly because if you have Morgan Freeman, it's going to work. He's going to make it work. And once again, starting with this idea that Alice is the smartest person in the room, Morgan is very believable as the smartest person in the world. And in the new series on Amazon, Aldous Hodge, who is a very, very talented actor. Really talented. There was an audience screening that I went to in New York, and I've been to a lot of screenings of movies and TV shows and whatever. I've never seen a crowd screaming and yelling and clapping during the show the way they did for this. And there's an early scene where Aldous does. He is the smartest person in the room. This kind of a white nationalist that he's doing a Q and A with. And just the way he handles it just had the audience going nuts. But Alex does, in the course of the series, he really does deal with the problems of right now of being a cop in dc. The effect on your family, the effect on you, the effect of making a mistake.

[Carl Miller]

Well, we in fact, actually have that clip from the show.

[James Patterson]

Okay.

[Carl Miller]

Which plays into what we talked about earlier, about Cross being able to use psychology to worm their way into the. The head of a suspect. So let's play that.

[Alex Cross]

You thought you were special.

[James Patterson]

You're not in my head, boy. And you're not getting a confession.

[Alex Cross]

Oh, I'm definitely living rent free. And you already confessed. I'm just amusing myself right now.

[James Patterson]

I didn't say anything.

[Alex Cross]

Yeah, you did. Life's Fitful Fever. Yeah, I caught that. It's Macbeth, Right. The affliction caused by the burden of guilt. You said that's what's making you sick. That's a confession on tape.

[Carl Miller]

Wow.

[James Patterson]

Yeah. It was one of the highest testing series they've ever done, which is cool.

[Carl Miller]

That's really cool.

[James Patterson]

So they're really behind it, and I'm just delighted with it. I really like the way it turned out.

[Carl Miller]

And how would you say that this vision of Alex Cross is different from the Morgan Freeman vision?

[James Patterson]

It's more realistic. Look, I mean, I've been very lucky to have three talented actors play Alex. Morgan, Tyler Perry, and now Aldous Hodge. And they're all good. And, you know, every once in a while, somebody will create a character and you get a few different actors playing them, and that's really. I don't know how many have played Sherlock Holmes now, but it just says something about the character. So I'm ecstatic about this.

[Carl Miller]

Brilliant. Well, let's turn to the book two, James, which is coming out, I think, on the 25th of November. Why are these books still resonating with people, do you think?

[James Patterson]

Well, I think the character has legs, the character. And I think people like. It's a combination of. They know that the stories are going to keep them turning the pages. There's going to be a good villain in almost every book. And people loved Alex's connection to his family, and they identify with it. And the family is always a big part of the books. And the family is a really big part of the series. On Amazon and Samson was not a big part in the movies. Samson was very minor in the series. The family is huge. The kids are great, and Samson is great. Mustafa, he's wonderful, wonderful Samson.

[Carl Miller]

Well, to bring this full circle then. So my biggest challenge in Kill List was basically figuring out what to do with these kill orders with the information that we had, how to tell the targets, how to approach law enforcement. I think with all of your massive experience writing about those kinds of dilemmas, do you think that would have kind of equipped you to be able to kind of navigate those kinds of decisions in a better way? Because I felt myself kind of very underpowered often when trying to do that.

[James Patterson]

You know, life in general, but especially as a writer, I think it's just a series of solving problems, problems to be solved. You know, people that succeed at this game, I think are pretty good problem solvers because it's just nothing but problems to be solved.

[Carl Miller]

Indeed.

[James Patterson]

And pretty much every chapter there's a problem to be solved. It's just new problems and opportunities.

[Carl Miller]

Brilliant. Well, James, thank you so much for joining us. I've absolutely loved talking to you.

[James Patterson]

Thank you. This was great. It was really cool.

[Carl Miller]

So I have, of course, just been speaking to James Patterson, the bestselling author of the Alex Cross novels. Season one of Cross is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. Every day, hundreds of people go about their lives with no idea that someone has paid to have them killed. The first six episodes of Kill List follow our race against time to warn those in danger and to uncover the truth behind the site before it is too late. But that is not the whole story. Starting with episode seven, we investigate the ripple effects that the murder for hire site has had on its victims by diving into individual cases in depth. Follow Kill List on the Wandri app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free on Wandary. Join Wondry in the Wandary app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting www.wandri.com links. Kill list now. If you like Kill List, you can binge all episodes ad free right now by joining Wondri in the Wandri app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey. This special episode of Kill List is hosted by me, Carl Miller for novel. Our series producer is Tom Wright. Our managing producer is Cherie Houston. Sound design and mixing by Nicholas Alexander for Wandery. Our senior producers are Peter Arcuni and Mandy Gorenstein. Sarah Mathers is our managing producer. Executive producers are George Lavender Marshall Louis, Erin O'Flirty and Jen Sargent.