Jon Stock

Jon Stock is a full-time writer of commercial fiction, specialising first in spy novels and, in recent years, psychological thrillers written under the name J. S. Monroe. His first non-fiction book, The Sleep Room (Little, Brown, 2025) is about the controversial British psychiatrist Dr William Sargant and his continuous narcosis treatment. It is currently in development as a four-part TV series.

His first novel, The Riot Act (Serpent’s Tail, 1997), was shortlisted by the Crime Writers’ Association for its debut novel award, and his ‘Daniel Marchant’ spy trilogy, which began with Dead Spy Running (HarperCollins, 2009), was optioned as a film by Warner Bros.

Jon’s first J. S. Monroe novel, Find Me (Head of Zeus, 2017), has been translated into fourteen languages. The book experimented with unreliable narration and explored popular neuroscience and psychopharmacology, themes that were revisited in Forget My Name (Head of Zeus, 2018), The Other You (Head of Zeus, 2020) and The Man on Hackpen Hill (Head of Zeus, 2021). In terms of genre, they are generally a hybrid mix of psychological suspense and police procedural, with a dash of espionage. His most recent novel, No Place to Hide (Head of Zeus, 2023), was a standalone thriller based on a loose retelling of Dr Faustus.

For many years, Jon worked as a freelance journalist, writing arts and investigative features for the Independent and the Times, before moving to New Delhi, where he worked as a stringer for the Daily Telegraph and the South China Morning Post. On his return to the UK, he joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph and became editor of the paper’s Saturday weekend lifestyle supplement.

Jon became a fulltime author in 2015. He lives in Wiltshire with his wife, a photographer, and they have three adult children. His J. S. Monroe novels are often set in a village not dissimilar to his own and play on the contrast between the county’s beautiful, Neolithic landscape and its sinister ‘deep state’ undercurrents.

Photo by Hilary Stock.