Marshall Karp

Marshall Karp is an American novelist and television writer who partnered with James Patterson to create the NYPD Red series, a set of thrillers following an elite New York police unit tasked with protecting the city's wealthy and famous. Before turning to crime fiction, Karp had a long career in advertising and television, writing for and producing numerous TV series and specials, experience that shaped the tight, scene-driven structure of his prose. Karp's earlier solo work includes the Lomax and Biggs mystery series, comic crime novels featuring a pair of LAPD detectives investigating cases connected to the entertainment industry, drawing on his own insider knowledge of Hollywood. His collaboration with Patterson on NYPD Red proved to be one of Patterson's more durable series partnerships, running to multiple entries that combined celebrity-world satire with high-stakes procedural plotting. Karp has continued to write within the thriller genre, valued for pairing comedic timing with tightly engineered suspense plots, and remains associated primarily with the NYPD Red franchise among readers of Patterson's extensive co-authored catalog.