James Patterson New Book: "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe: A True Crime Thriller" (Little, Brown),, hitting shelves Dec. 1

Does the world really need another Marilyn Monroe project? Don’t we already know everything there is to know about the wild ride of her life and the intrigue surrounding her untimely end?

James Patterson Is Pretty Sure Marilyn Monroe Was Murdered

 

The acclaimed author, whose 250 books sold half a billion copies, casts an eye on the actress’s still-mysterious death.

November 21, 2025 10:30am

". . .As for the fascination that led Patterson to The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, “I mean, she was just a monster of a star, and she kind of threw it away,” he says.

Belying the cover’s claim that it is a “true crime thriller,” the book includes a disclaimer in the fine print calling it “a work of fiction.”  

• There’s a robust bibliography of primary and secondary sources, but there’s also imagined dialogue. 

“I learned that from Norman Mailer. I believe in it, as long as you’re being honest with the public,” Patterson says. 

 

“I don’t know if Woodward does it. He takes so many interviews, but the interviews — it’s people remembering what happened in the scene, and they’re remembering dialogue. So, you know, most nonfiction, is it real?”

 

Patterson says he’s still shopping the audiovisual rights, but he’s confident The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe would make a killer limited series. He plans on doing more books in his Last Days of series. (Lennon was the first, Monroe the second.) 

• “Elvis is a possibility for sure. Gene Hackman.” 
• What would be the biggest swing he could take? “Putin,” Patterson says, without flinching. 
• “He knows where the bodies are buried.”

With a reported net worth of $800 million, Patterson has published more than 250 books that have sold some 475 million copies, starting with his 1976 debut, The Thomas Berryman Number, which he struggled to get published before it went on to win a prestigious Edgar Award. 

He has a team at Little, Brown (an imprint of Hachette) and an arsenal of co-authors, including fellow celebrities ranging from Bill Clinton to MrBeast. A 2010 New York Times Magazine feature about his publishing empire was headlined, “James Patterson Inc.”

But Patterson blanches at the notion that he’s some sort of executive presiding over a multimillion-dollar best-seller business. “I don’t have a book factory. Here I am in this office here,” he says with a laugh. “People got the wrong fucking idea. It’s not a factory, folks. It’s this lonely guy in this room here. The perception and the reality are just so far apart. … My time here is short — what can I do most beautifully? That’s what pushes me. I don’t need the money.”

 This story appeared in the Nov. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.