Paetro, Maxine 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born April 19, 1946, in Miami, FL; daughter of Samuel P. and Madeline J. Paetro. Education: Attended Jacksonville University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Tracy Fisher, William Morris Agency, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Formerly served as executive vice president and director of creative Operations, Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising; manager of creative department at Ogilvy & Mather, New York City; vice president and associate manager of creative services at Young & Rubicam, New York City; vice president and manager of creative department at Foote, Cone & Belding Communications, Inc., New York City; DFS/Dorland Worldwide (advertising agency), New York City, vice president and director of creative operations, 1981-87.

MEMBER:

Authors Guild, Art Directors Club, One Club for Copy and Art.

WRITINGS:

How to Put Your Book Together and Get a Job in Advertising, Executive Communications, 1979.

Manshare (novel), M. Evans (Lanham, MD), 1986.

Babydreams (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1988.

Windfall, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Dodd Darin) Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, Warner (New York, NY), 1994.

"WOMEN'S MURDER CLUB" SERIES; WITH JAMES PATTERSON

4th of July, Little, Brown (New York, NY) 2005.

The 5th Horseman, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

6th Target, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of articles and stories to magazines, including Mademoiselle, Self, and Cosmopolitan.

SIDELIGHTS:

Maxine Paetro, formerly an advertising executive, began her writing career with a series of contributions to women's magazines. She graduated to full length nonfiction with her first book, How to Put Your Book Together and Get a Job in Advertising, a guide for beginners trying to break into the advertising industry. Paetro moved on to fiction with her first novel, Manshare, a story about a single woman, Hannah, who works at a major magazine in New York and aspires to become the features editor. In an attempt to get the promotion, she pitches a story on the shortage of good, single men in the city, only to have her editor demand that her article include a solution to the dilemma. People contributor Margot Dougherty called the book "a sometimes amusing fantasy of the single yuppie in semi-crisis." Paetro's follow-up efforts, Babydreams and Windfall, tackle similarly light topics, but with a bit of mystery added to the romantic romps.

In 2005, Paetro began writing the "Women's Murder Club" series with noted crime novelist James Patterson. Their first joint effort, 4th of July, finds Lindsay Boxer, a lieutenant in the San Francisco police department, struggling to solve a series of murders while also facing charges of police brutality. A critic for Publishers Weekly wrote: "Heroic super-sleuthing, a steadily gripping plot line and 146 snappy chapters add up to suspense fiction euphoria." Joe Hartlaub, in a review for Book Reporter, found that this installment "unquestionably is the best book in this relatively new series."

Paetro has also continued writing nonfiction works. Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, which she cowrote with Dodd Darin, the couple's son, offers fans an inside look at the ill-fated romance of two talented performers. Ilene Cooper, in a review for Booklist, called Dream Lovers "a real page-turner—part insider's look, part exposé, part cri de Coeur."

Paetro told CA: "When I wrote How to Put Your Book Together and Get a Job in Advertising, I had no idea that I was a writer. I was working in advertising, in a management job that included interviewing junior copywriters. I interviewed a lot of ‘kids,’ and I felt terrible for these beginners because … it was very hard to break into the advertising business. I thought that if I wrote a guide describing the principals of creating an advertising portfolio, I could help these ‘kids’ lop off about six months of going door-to-door, getting grueling and painful criticism. Writing that slim primer is still one of the most satisfying of my writing experiences. Many people have gotten their first jobs because of that small book, and through writing it, I learned that I liked to write.

"My first novels were explorations into my own deeply-felt questions and issues concerning being a single woman in Manhattan. I [was] successful in business, less successful in love. My three surrogates and heroines, Hannah, Stevie, and Harrie taught me a lot about love, about men, and about how to tell a story that entertains. It was because of these novels that I decided to leave advertising and work as a full-time writer. I'm so glad I made this decision."