Jerry Cotton is the fictional character in a series of crime novels by many different writers in German-speaking

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 countries and in Finland.
The novels center around the adventures of FBI agent Jerry Cotton, which take place in and around New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. In 1954 the first novel appeared as no. 68: "Ich suchte den Gangster-Chef" (I Sought the Gang Boss) in the series "Bastei Kriminalroman". The pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 "Jerry Cotton" was developed in 1956 and the first novella with this name on the front-page appeared with the title "Ich jagte den Diamanten-Hai" (I hunted the Diamond Shark).