Criminal Minds is celebrating its 20th anniversary in September of 2025. While the show is about to launch its 18th season in May, on Paramount+, it has also been greenlit for a 19th season, indicating that the brand has a bright future. Although Criminal Minds has been rebranded to Criminal Minds: Evolution after the show was picked up by Paramount due to the cancelation over at CBS, fans of that original run still have a firm connection to the new iteration of the series and all that it represents. Of course, for a series to boast such longevity, it needs to be able to change with the times, and Criminal Minds: Evolution is a literal demonstration of its ability to do so.
What’s perhaps most fascinating is that Criminal Minds has also been able to move into other mediums. It’s something that is becoming increasingly common across fictional media, as franchises expand and experimentation occurs. Diversification is the key to success in the world of entertainment today, and why should a procedural crime drama like Criminal Minds be left behind, when there’s so much more to achieve? However, many fans may not know that the franchise also branched out into written form with more than a few novels.
Criminal Minds Expanded With Spinoffs & Tie-Ins
A Series Of Novels Were Set In-Universe
The sometimes horror-fueled Criminal Minds has never been a stranger to experimentation. When the show initially released back in 2005, audiences weren’t sure what to expect. The series, which was initially going to be called Quantico, had massive potential, and with such a wide ensemble cast, there was a possibility that spinoffs could always be explored down the line. So many other crime and police procedural series have already investigated the idea of setting the story in other locations or departments, albeit in the same continuity and with a couple of recurring cast members from the original series.
Criminal Minds, therefore, plowed ahead with a couple of major spinoffs, like Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, Criminal Minds: Korea, and The Real Criminal Minds. Perhaps most shockingly of all, two separate video game titles were also developed based on the franchise, the first launching in 2009 and the second debuting on mobile in 2018. Neither lit the world on fire, but they were entertaining enough to draw in the fan base. Perhaps that’s the critical point here. Executives were keen to see where else they could profit from these characters and this rich world, and the natural next choice was to turn to a medium that had inspired the series in the first place.
The crime genre has absolutely thrived within the publishing landscape, and is a section of literature that continues to grow year-on-year. It’s doubtless that when creating the series, Criminal Minds’ resident founder, Jeff Davis, would have looked to some of those classic texts for inspiration. The tropes of the genre were well-defined on these pages, far before television networks decided to put their own twist on proceedings. Great authors like Agatha Christie had redefined this type of storytelling forever, and comparisons would constantly be made, regardless of the approach taken to the material.
It was a no-brainer to commission a series of disturbing novels based on Criminal Minds, and set within that same fictional universe. In 2007, the very first novel of this series would debut, proving to be quite popular among the show’s core audience. Titled Criminal Minds: Jump Cut, the novel performed relatively well and received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Two more books were therefore added to the series. First, it was Criminal Minds: Killer Profile in 2008, during what could be considered the height of the procedural series. Then Criminal Minds: Finishing School followed shortly thereafter, albeit to lessening fanfare and diminishing returns.
The Trilogy Explored New Themes & Characters
Each Portrayed A Deadly Case
But to whom did CBS turn to to make the most of Criminal Minds’ fantastic premise and expand this beloved world? Well, it was Max Allan Collins who was most trusted with the IP. The author is well-known for his talents in the crime genre and is a New York Times bestselling author. He is now known for his work on major franchises like Dick Tracy and Batman, but also crafted original series such as the Quarry and Mallory run. Not only did he also win the Inkpot Award and the Shamus Award twice, but he also moved into the world of comics, working with major collaborators like DC, Marvel, IDW and Titan Comics. Obviously, Max Allan Collins was the perfect man for the job.
Collins’ great talent is his ability to mimic the tone of a well-known property, but still place his own stamp on proceedings. It’s why his Criminal Minds novels read so well, and any fans of the show will be able to feel a connection with the material almost immediately. The first novel, the twisting Criminal Minds: Jump Cut, follows an elite team of FBI Agents, who are sent to Kansas to investigate a series of grizzly murders, while chasing a subplot concerning a completely separate crime. This balance of the two narratives, and how they interweave despite seemingly being very distinct, doesn’t feel that dissimilar from how the show is able to balance major beats at once. The return of familiar characters from the series only makes it feel even more like an episode of the show, just in a different format.
Criminal Minds: Killer Profile follows up on this by taking these leading men and women to yet another new location. Collins always seemed to want to produce a reason that these stories had to be novelized, and part of that was about moving on to different backdrops, while upping the stakes on a self-contained story. Here, the FBI Agents are tackling an even more peculiar case in Chicago, of murders that are fashioned in a way that mimics some of the most famous serial killers from throughout history. Again, it’s an intense premise, but one that really appeals to those who continue to follow the crime genre as a whole.
Finally came Criminal Minds: Finishing School, a book that feels quite toned down compared to its predecessors. This story takes place in Minnesota, where three young girls are found dead after being poisoned. When the team pieces together further clues, involving a ring of kidnappings and the fact that the girls in question had actually disappeared over a decade ago, a much more personal case starts to unfold. Collins is able to tonally shift the piece, just as the series is able to do, and that is much to the novels’ benefit. In each instance, Collins’ novels feel like complimentary material to the main show, allowing fans to step inside the heads of their most beloved characters.
The Criminal Minds Novels Were Not the Only Tie-Ins
Criminal Minds: Sociopaths, Serial Killers, and Other Deviants Was Also Commissioned
Criminal Minds is so successful that at some point someone had to come for the crown, and that trilogy of novels weren’t the only ones available on the market. Soon, a new book would be commissioned, but one that took the franchise in a very different direction. Part of the appeal of Criminal Minds is that many of the cases investigated are actually based on real-world scenarios. And so, Criminal Minds: Sociopaths, Serial Killers, and Other Deviants was also produced in 2010, to tie in with the 5th season of the CBS show.
The book was put together by Jeff Mariotte, a best-selling author who also has plenty of IP experience with brands like Tarzan, NCSI, CSI, Star Trek, Narcos and Mafia III. Clearly intrigued by the criminal mind, Mariotte was a great fit for the project, which sought to explore some of those real-world cases that Criminal Minds was inspired by. Not only did the book contain information about the show, with behind-the-scenes and exclusive photos, but it also provided an insight into the genuine criminals that the show based its characters on and the unique cases they were involved in.
The book also walks readers through the process of how a criminal is categorized, and how the agents that track them down are able to achieve what they are able to. This is a different type of tie-in, one that differs from the mainline novels by offering up the facts behind the fiction. Fans of Criminal Minds should be able to experience the franchise in bold new ways with both the trilogy of fictional novels and this tie-in text with a non-fiction edge. All the books mentioned here are currently available to purchase, and while they were written back in the 2000s and early 2010s, all of them still feel just as relevant to the show today.
