1st and 3rd Person Narration

I have a similar question. My main character is written in 1st person but I need to add some other scenes in that are written in 3rd person involving other characters. This is to show scenes that while they may affect my MC in the future they show things going on that he can't be aware of. Are there many books out there written this way? The first chapter is 3rd person as it involves a murder. The second chapter introduces my MC and is written in 1st. He then goes on to witness the murder. A few other scenes are written from the perspective of the antagonist and one other character who becomes important to the plot. I wanted to write in 1st person but am now on the verge of rewriting (again) back to 3rd person as that was how i had originally written the story.

I have read stories that have the MC written in 3rd person and chapters involving the villain in 1st but I don't think I've read any written my way with the MC in 1st and the villain in 3rd. Does anyone have any suggestions?

James Patterson's Alex Cross novels are written with Cross in first person and everyone else in third. He gets away with it because he can get away with anything.

If this is your first, or early, attempt at novel writing, I'd advise using third person all the way through. It is the least difficult, and will force you to stay in one person's POV throughout the story. If you absolutely, positively, must switch to another person's POV, stay in third person. Don't make the switch because it's easier for you to tell the tale.

My take is that this kind of technical stuff should be as unobtrusive as possible. I find changes of this nature disruptive - they break my immersion in the story, like seeing the strings above the puppet show. That might be just me though.

Are you sure you need the third-person scenes? Could you impart the information to the reader another way, or is it possible that the reader might be better off uninformed?

edit: I was thinking specifically of MrWrite here, whose third-person scenes are intended to show scenes the first-person narrator doesn't see.

Thanks Parametric. Sorry amurray, I didn't mean to hijack your thread but our questions were so similar it made sense to post here rather than make another thread.

Parametric I've decided to go with 1st person as I feel I write much better this way. Like you said I can let the reader find everything out as my MC finds it out.