Does Celebrity Crime Fiction Help or Hurt?

Honestly, what’s your reaction to seeing a thriller written by Bill Clinton and James Patterson? Two thrillers now by Clinton, umpteen by Patterson. A New Yorker review of the 2018 The President is Missing lambasted the book’s cliched prose, absurd plot and blatant product placement. Yet it hit the NYT bestseller list and sold 152,000 in hardcover alone during the first week, this despite a rocky book tour where people assailed Clinton with questions about sexual misconduct (Monica Lewinsky? Jeffrey Epstein?) These two had so much fun horsing around (not writing; analysis of the text indicates it was written by Patterson) they put out another collab in 2021, The President’s Daughter. The New York Times called this one silly, Kirkus Reviews termed the plot predictable and the Washington Post expressed embarrassment over the book’s fantasy version of Clinton. Still, another bestseller.

With all that success (and money) pouring in, how could Hillary resist the temptation? She and Louise Penny ‘collaborated’ on State of Terror, meaning Penny wrote it and Clinton recalled memories from her time as Secretary of State and made suggestions on drafts. Another NYT bestseller. Both The President is Missing and State of Terror were optioned for film after competitive bidding. Showtime later scrapped the Bill Clinton/Patterson project citing concerns about the current political environment and the need to rewrite the plot.

Patterson and Penny, already at the peak of their profession, served here as high class ghostwriters. Why would Patterson, possibly the most successful author on the planet, want to collaborate on a book? Maybe he was bored down in Palm Beach County in his 20,100 square foot mansion? Penny seems to have been flattered by Clinton’s attention. Though I couldn’t find information on the royalties split, I would bet they receive a hefty chunk as opposed to your average ghostwriter. 

Patterson next collaborated with Dolly Parton on Run, Rose Run, a country music thriller (is that a thing?) that Kirkus Reviews also qualified as ‘silly’ but ‘fun.’ An album of songs attributed to the novel’s three main characters was set to release at the same time. So a novel as marketing material for a record launch, or a record as marketing support for a novel release? 

There’s plenty more of this kind of fun, although not all of it has enjoyed the same ROI. How can we forget Boris Johnson’s 2004 Seventy-Two Virgins (not to be confused with a dating service of the same name), characterized by nearly everybody as racist, misogynist and buffoonish? No matter. Sales figures are ridiculously hard to find, but it appears to have sold tens of thousands at least.

What is the effect of this kind of celebrity culture intrusion into the crime fiction market? Some people argue in terms of the old publishing model where supposedly a big seller could support a lot of titles with literary merit but little selling power, thus promoting the presence of good literature in society. But we’re no longer dealing with that quaint publishing world where curmudgeonly editors helped F. Scott Fitzgerald revise an unwieldy draft. Maybe we should view an author’s link to a celebrity as just another marketing tool, a way to establish a platform in an age where platform sells more than prose or plot. But it seems likely that these massive sellers are scooping up a big chunk of available dollars for book purchases, leaving everybody else in a bloodbath of cannibalistic minnows.

Celebrity culture defines our era but what is it? Why do our glands start pumping faster when we spot a celebrity driving by? Why would people rush out to pay $25 plus for a hardback copy of a thriller with Clinton’s name on the cover that reviewers characterize as ‘silly’? Some understand celebrities as the new demigods, depositories of the numinous, a term heard in studies of religion and psychology. It means something that inspires feelings of awe, mystery, reverence. Celebrities carry this powerful aura, so anything they touch carries a residue of that power. Think how excited people get by possessing a famous person’s autograph. A copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles owned by Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts went for over $200K showing that the mere touch of a famous person is insanely valued.

Maybe we should understand celebrity value as analogous to the power of big equity funds like Black Rock. Their financial heft is so outsized that once they enter a market, the market becomes so distorted that people operating on normal value scales can’t compete. How many authors of polished well-plotted crime novels lost sales when readers plunked down their book budget for a title with Clinton on the cover? Let me know what you think!

Coming on March 31!