Marilyn Monroe leans over the balcony of Manhattan's Ambassador Hotel in 1955. Ed Feingersh/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment James Patterson believes Marilyn Monroe was probably murdered. "I think that she was treading in very dangerous waters," he says. "She had these incredible relationships with President Kennedy, and with Robert Kennedy, and with Sinatra, and with Mafia figures. They told her stuff, and she kept track of it. She had information that was kind of dangerous." Patterson is speaking via Zoom from his Palm Beach home office, weeks before the release of his upcoming book, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe: A True Crime Thriller (Little, Brown), which revisits the rise and fall of Hollywood's most legendary blonde bombshell. Related Stories Lifestyle See Emerald Fennell's New Edition of 'Wuthering Heights' (Exclusive) Movies Leighton Meester, Jared Padalecki to Star in Netflix Rom-Com Based on Katherine Center Bestseller 'The Bodyguard' It's the story that keeps on giving, even 63 years after Monroe's body was found in her Spanish-style four-bedroom Brentwood home, pill containers on the nightstand and an empty bottle of Nembutal on the floor. Her death at the age of 36 remains one of pop culture's most enduring fascinations, a historical saga well suited for our conspiracy-addled times. James Patterson's The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe is out Dec. 1. Courtesy of Hachette Book Group The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, hitting shelves Dec. 1 and co-authored with British writer Imogen Edwards-Jones, joins a gazillion other narrative explorations of the late actress born Norma Jeane Mortenson. Among the most recent were a pair of Netflix joints from 2022: Blonde, a psychodrama - starring Ana de Armas - based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2000 novel of the same name; and The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, a documentary that expands on Anthony Summers' 1985 book Goddess. 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? "A lot of people don't know the story," Patterson counters. "There's a lot of stuff I didn't know." Such as? "The 11 foster homes. The fact that she had a pretty bad stutter when she was a kid," Patterson says. "I didn't know much about the death scene, about the autopsy not being as complete as it should have been, that one of the detectives was convinced the scene was staged. The key is, a lot of people know about her a bit, but not that much. You'd be surprised." The same could be said of Patterson. You know him as the reigning maestro of thriller fiction and one of the world's best-selling authors. But maybe you're not familiar with his doctoral studies at Vanderbilt or his earlier career on Madison Avenue. Or, for that matter, Patterson's more recent expansion in the nonfiction space, with a growing list of adaptation-ready page-turners covering A-list scandal and true crime. It began in earnest in 2017 with Filthy Rich, a prescient Jeffrey Epstein yarn that became the basis for a 2020 Netflix documentary. "I knew it was a great story," Patterson says. "I couldn't get it covered by CNN, Fox. The Wall Street Journal covered it and the Miami Herald, and that was it. I mean, it did well, it was a No. 1, but it just goes to show you how stupid people are." Daily News front page the following day. NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images Next came books on Aaron Hernandez, John Lennon, the Kennedys, the British royal family, Mafia defense attorney Barry Slotnick, Tiger Woods and, in 2025, the Idaho Four, which Amazon Prime Video adapted as a docuseries. "I like to take big swings," says Patterson. He also has a Heroes Among Us series, telling the stories of public servants like teachers, ER nurses, combat veterans, police officers and librarians. "A half a dozen of those stories could be movies," he notes. With Patterson's nonfiction work in particular, his co-authors typically handle the bulk of the research, reporting and writing, with Patterson shaping the copy for tone, voice and so on - though he says the process varies book by book. Nonfiction collaborators include journalists and authors like Tim Malloy, Casey Sherman, Benjamin Wallace, Chris Mooney and Vicky Ward, who's following up her work on the Idaho Four with a collaboration for a Luigi Mangione book. "That's a big swing," Patterson says. "A fascinating story, really loaded with potential." 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 cal