A glance at the top 100 paperbacks of 2007 shows what crime novels and thrillers mean to publishers. One quarter of the bestsellers belong to this genre. Four of them are the work or joint work of one man, James Patterson - who is also the most borrowed author in UK libraries. It is possible that Patterson will have eight titles on the 2008 list.

That is the annual output of the “Patterson brand” for Random House, his new publisher. RH was already the home of John Grisham, Kathy Reichs and Karin Slaughter, but hungrily committed millions to snapping up Patterson as well, and made space in its schedule to allow him to double his production. His novels include the Alex Cross thrillers, as well as co-authored series such as the Women's Murder Club.

While RH makes its bid for dominance, Penguin, which recently failed in an attempt to lift Jonathan Kellerman into the superleague, is under-represented at the top of the crime bestseller lists. At the time when Penguin lured Kellerman from Headline (to which he has returned), the company's chief executive explained that the deal was part of a strategy to sell more books through supermarkets. That remark explains the most significant trend in crime publishing. Last year, HarperCollins introduced a new author, Andrew Gross (one of Patterson's collaborators), by targeting him at supermarket customers. Gross's The Blue Zone sold more than 100,000 copies, a significant percentage of them through Tesco.

The boom in supermarket sales has benefited thrillers rather than stories of detection. Authors of detective fiction - Ian Rankin is a prime example - can take years to build audiences; but the book market today wants quick returns. Short-termism is the only blight in what is otherwise a golden age for crime fiction.

Nicholas Clee, formerly editor of The Bookseller, is the books diarist of The Times

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