He’s sold 425 million books. She’s won an Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy

Let’s imagine for a moment this is a book by bestselling American author James Patterson, the creator of the Alex Cross series and many others. It might start by establishing a sense of place – in this case, a chaotic apartment in a big city. The weather – dark clouds, driving rain – would be used as an anthropomorphic device to convey foreboding. Most sentences would be short. Like this. And the first chapter would end with a one-two punch designed to leave readers intrigued, unsettled and desperate for more. For example: “I knew that email had changed my life. And not for the better.”

Patterson’s distinctive style – his lean, plot-driven prose and short cliffhanger-packed chapters – is weaponised to propel readers to the final page. But recognising a formula does not make the result easy to replicate. If it were, every wannabe scribe would be living on an estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and earning up to $US90 million a year. Stephen King may have called him a “terrible writer” and dismissed his more than 200 books as carbon copies, but try telling that to fans of Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women’s Murder Club, et al. Patterson, 78, has sold more than 425 million books and topped The New York Times Best Seller List a record 67 times. If he were a browser, he’d be Google.

How does he churn out so many books? It’s no secret: he has help. Patterson works with a team of co-authors who are given a detailed outline (they run to 50-80 pages apparently) describing every plot twist and character arc. His stable of writers create a draft which Patterson hammers into his trademark style. In the book world, where an author’s singular vision is an article of faith, this assembly-line approach has ruffled a few feathers.

The working-class kid from Newburgh, New York, who graduated top of his class at Manhattan University before becoming a hotshot advertising executive, is unrepentant. He considers himself a storyteller rather than a literary figure and believes the collaborative approach enhances the creative process. He has compared himself to a TV “showrunner”, the guy with the artistic vision who presides over the creative team delivering it. As well as his stable of lesser-known writers, he’s developed a lucrative sideline collaborating with famous people. He has worked with Bill Clinton on three books and written a Nashville-based thriller called Run Rose Run with country music star Dolly Parton.

Now he has a new partner in crime (fiction) – the Oscar, Emmy and Tony award-winning American actor Viola Davis. You might remember her relegating Meryl Streep to scenery during the incendiary eight minutes they had on screen together in the 2008 movie Doubt. Other standout performances include the intimidating lawyer Annalise Keating in TV’s How to Get Away with Murder and the long-suffering wife of a wayward husband (played by Denzel Washington) in 2016’s Fences. The latter won her the Oscar for best supporting actor. Davis is that rare thing – an “EGOT”, having added a Grammy to her trophy case for the audio book of her 2022 memoir Finding Me.

Together, they’ve written Judge Stone, a legal thriller set in the small Alabama town of Union Springs. The titular hero, a redoubtable circuit court judge called Mary Stone, is called on to adjudicate the case of a female doctor accused of performing an abortion on a 13-year-old black girl, Nova Jones. The teenager says she was sexually assaulted at a party, but in Alabama, abortion is prohibited even in cases of rape or incest. As well as pitching “pro-choice” and “pro-life” advocates into open conflict, the prospect of a black female judge presiding over the incendiary trial unleashes dark currents of racism and misogyny.

On a call from Los Angeles, Patterson and Davis sound like old friends despite the fact much of their collaboration took place via Zoom and emails. He dismisses my suggestion that a book about abortion, four years after the overturning of Roe vs Wade ended 50 years of federal protection, is a bold choice for a mainstream American writer. “I don’t think it is,” he says briskly. “This shouldn’t be political. It should be something people are willing to talk about.” Patterson points out that opinion polls suggest 85 per cent of Americans believe abortion should be available in cases of rape and he rails against “ridiculous rules” written by legislators in states such as Alabama that outlaw such exemptions.

If anything, he says, the bi-partisan enmity of contemporary America, gives Judge Stone additional weight. “One of the things we’re struggling with in this country right now is justice,” he says. “Judge Stone is a just human being. She never takes sides in this case and you don’t necessarily know where she will come out on some of the issues. She simply tries to be equitable.”

He adds, “There’s nothing better for me than if at the end of the whole thing people are talking about the book and discussing it. That’s what we need more of … discussion. Let’s keep our minds open and keep talking.”

Davis says the abortion issue may frame the narrative, but the book’s themes are much wider. “It’s about community, love, connection and justice. It’s about family. Ultimately, for Nova, it’s about protection and safety. I feel there are a lot of subjects that the controversial issue of abortion sparks in this town. If you ride the wave of this great story, that’s what you’ll come away with.”

It was Finding Me, a harrowing, soul-bearing book recalling Davis’ childhood in rat-infested public housing in Rhode Island, that convinced Patterson he should try to write with her. “Of course, I’d seen her in a lot of films and TV, but reading Finding Me made me realise she was a really good storyteller, a very honest storyteller. That was really attractive to me, particularly with this [Judge Stone] project.”

For her part, Davis, 60, says she was astonished when the literary juggernaut got in touch. “My agent called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to collaborate on a book with James Patterson. It just blew my mind. But when I heard the premise I thought ‘I could do this. I could collaborate with James Patterson and write this really special novel.’”

They’re both a little coy when it comes to details of who did what. He says he had a general sense of Judge Stone; that she was a “brilliant woman” who ran a small family farm as well as her courtroom. Initially, he considered calling her Rosetta Stone but thought better of it.

What he will say is that writing with one of America’s best actors has real advantages, particularly when it comes to putting words in characters’ mouths. “One of the hugely important things that Viola brings to this project – including re-writing a lot of my dialogue – is that she’s used to getting scripts written by other people and going ‘I don’t know if this is going to play’,” he explains. “In this case, that was never a problem; we knew the dialogue would work because Viola knew it was something she could say as an actor, something that would drive the narrative. That’s important and really useful.”

Davis, who had not written fiction previously, says “fleshing out” the book’s characters was a key part of her role. “James compared the story to To Kill a Mockingbird,” she explains. “And what makes that story iconic isn’t just the character of Tom Robinson [the black man accused of beating and raping a white girl] – it’s Atticus Finch, it’s Scout and it’s Jem. It’s all the characters that become so memorable we feel we’re part of that town.”

One of the ways she added flesh to the bones of her characters was by looking inwards. Davis, despite her enormous success, suffers from imposter syndrome. She has said, “I still feel like I’m going to wake up and everybody’s going to see me for the hack I am”. She imbued Judge Stone with similar feelings, adding layers of vulnerability and self-doubt to the judge’s formidable public facade. “We all wear a mask,” says Davis. “Judge Stone and Nova were very much a part of me.”

Could she imagine playing Mary Stone in the inevitable film or TV adaptation? “Oh, absolutely. You know what, a great character is simply an interesting human being. Someone full of duality and paradox. She holds your hand throughout the book and I think she’s a formidable hero.”

Judge Stone isn’t Patterson’s first African-American protagonist. His best-known creation, the Washington DC detective and forensic psychologist Alex Cross, is also black. It’s part of Patterson lore that when Hollywood came calling and offered him a seven-figure payday if he allowed Cross to be portrayed as a white man, he turned them down.

Even so, not everyone approves of white authors writing black characters. Critics have called it misrepresentation or even “literary blackface”. Patterson defends himself by describing Cross as a character who just happens to be black. He attracted considerably more criticism when he told a British newspaper, in 2022, that white male writers face “another form of racism”. The firestorm ignited by that comment led to him retracting it and apologising.

Despite his previous statements, I feel obliged to ask him if one of the reasons he collaborated with Davis was the optics of a white author writing a character who is not only black but female too. “I don’t really think that way,” he says with a modicum of frustration. “I grew up in a town that was about 50-50 black and white and I just don’t think about it. A woman that helped bring me up was a black woman. Maybe I’m being naive, but it just doesn’t enter my mind.”

In any case, it seems likely this won’t be the last collaboration between Patterson and Davis. She clearly loved the writing process, describing it as a “joy”. “My brain is always churning with ideas; it’s an infinite playground of ideas based on myself and people I’ve met. Whenever anyone invites me in, which James did, and makes me feel welcome, it’s like it releases the Kraken of imagination.”

Patterson mirrors her enthusiasm. “A piece of the joyfulness is that we both kept wanting to make it better and better,” he says. “Sometimes you get into creative processes where there are things getting in the way of making it better, but there was nothing doing that here. It was just the two of us. When it came to editors, if they raised things that we agreed with, fine. If not, it’s our book.”

Judge Stone is out now.

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