Richard DiLallo

Richard DiLallo is an American writer and former advertising executive — he served as vice president and executive creative director at DDB Worldwide before moving into fiction — who has built a substantial career as one of James Patterson's regular co-authors. His writing credits with Patterson span multiple series and standalones rather than a single signature franchise, including Alex Cross's Trial, a companion novel to the main Alex Cross series told as a historical story narrated by Cross about his own ancestors rather than a present-day investigation, plus The Christmas Wedding, The Store, The Midwife Murders, The Ninth Month, and The Paris Detective.

That range — holiday fiction, workplace thriller, medical suspense, and detective fiction — reflects the nature of Patterson's collaborative model, where co-authors bring craft and pacing to a wide variety of premises rather than owning one recurring world. DiLallo's advertising background, with its emphasis on tight, hook-driven prose, suits the commercial, fast-moving style Patterson's collaborations are known for. Outside his Patterson work, DiLallo has published essays and articles in outlets including Glamour and Brides.

Readers coming to DiLallo through the Alex Cross series specifically should know that Alex Cross's Trial is a self-contained historical side story, not required reading for the main Cross timeline, and can be read independently of the numbered series.