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 book, 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 Stock’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) and The Other You (Head of Zeus, 2020). In terms of genre, they are a hybrid mix of psychological suspense and police procedural, with a dash of espionage.

For many years, Jon Stock worked as a freelance journalist, writing about the arts 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 Stock lives in Wiltshire with his wife, a photographer, and they have three adult children. His J. S. Monroe novels are 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.