J.S.Monroe is the pseudonym of the British author Jon Stock. Writing as J.S.Monroe, Jon is the author of five psychological thrillers: Find Me, Forget My Name,  The Other You , The Man on Hackpen Hill and, most recently, No Place To Hide.

Writing as Jon Stock, he is also the author of six spy novels, including Dead Spy Running, which was optioned by Warner Bros. He lives in Wiltshire with his wife, fine art photographer Hilary Stock, and is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford, as well as on the committee of the Marlborough LitFest. He is currently writing his first non-fiction book, about the psychiatrist Dr William Sargant.

Find Me was published in 2017 in the UK by Head of Zeus and in America by Mira (HarperCollins). It has sold 150,000 copies and translation rights have been sold to 14 countries.

His second J.S.Monroe thriller, Forget My Name, was the first J.S.Monroe novel to feature DI Silas Hart and his sidekick DC Strover. It was published by Head of Zeus in hardback in October 2018 and as a paperback in June 2019.  Park Row Books published it n the US as The Last Thing She Remembers in May 2019. Translation rights have been sold to six countries. 

The Other You, also featuring Hart and Strover, was published by Head of Zeus in hardback in January 2020 and translation rights have been sold to South Korea and Bulgaria. Because of the pandemic, paperback publication was put back from July 2020 to January 2021.

The Man on Hackpen Hill, the third novel to feature Hart and Strover, was published in hardback in September 2021 by Head of Zeus and will be published in July 2022 in paperback.

The fifth J.S.Monroe thriller, No Place to Hide, will be published on 13 2023. ‘Clever, convincing and wickedly twisty – highly recommended,’ according to Mick Herron. ‘An intelligent and inventive thriller that grips to the very last page’ says J.P. Delaney. Compelling, relentless and genuinely frightening,’ agrees Simon Russell Beale.

 

J.S.Monroe at Marlborough LitFest 2022. © Ben Phillips

After reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Jon worked as a freelance journalist in London, writing investigative, lifestyle and arts features for most of Britain’s national newspapers, as well as contributing to BBC Radio 4. He was also chosen for Carlton TV’s acclaimed screenwriters course. In 1995 he lived in Kochi in Kerala, where he worked on the staff of India’s The Week magazine. Between 1998 and 2000, he was a foreign correspondent in Delhi, writing for the Daily Telegraph, South China Morning Post and the Singapore Straits Times. He also wrote the Last Word column in The Week magazine from 1995 to 2012.

On his return to Britain in 2000, he worked on various Saturday sections of the Telegraph before taking up a staff job as editor of its flagship Weekend section in 2005, which he oversaw for five years. He left Weekend and the Telegraph in 2010 to finish writing his Daniel Marchant trilogy and returned to the Telegraph in February 2013 to oversee the Telegraph‘s digital books channel. In May 2014 he was promoted to Executive Head of Weekend and Living, editing the paper’s Saturday and Sunday print supplements, as well as a range of digital lifestyle channels. He left the paper in October 2015 to resume his thriller-writing career.

His first novel, The Riot Act, published by Serpent’s Tail, was launched on the top floor of Canary Wharf tower in 1997. The book was shortlisted by the Crime Writers’ Association for its best first novel award and was subsequently published by Gallimard in France as part of its acclaimed Serie Noir. The Cardamom Club was published in 2003 by Blackamber (now Arcadia Books) in Britain and by Penguin in India.

Dead Spy Running, his third novel and the first in the Daniel Marchant (or ‘Legoland’) trilogy, was published by HarperCollins (Blue Door) in 2009 and has been translated into five languages (Dutch, French, German, Russian and Japanese). It follows Daniel Marchant, a young MI6 officer, as he tries to clear the name of his disgraced father, the former Chief of MI6. The sequel, Games Traitors Play, was published in 2011, and the final part of the trilogy, Dirty Little Secret, was published in 2012.

Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the trilogy in 2009, hiring Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) to write the screenplay for Dead Spy Running, which went into development with McG (Terminator IV, Charlie’s Angels, This Means War) and Kevin McCormick (Gangster Squad) producing. Jamie Moss worked on Gaghan’s script, followed by Simon Barrett, with Adam Wingard attached to direct.

In 2014, the film rights to Dead Spy Running were bought by Wonderland Sound and Vision, McG’s own production company.

In 2017, Jon was commissioned by The Nare, a luxury hotel in Cornwall, to write a spy novella set in and around the hotel, which is located on the Roseland Peninsula. To Snare A Spy is available to buy from the hotel.

Jon’s book on Dr William Sargant will be published by The Bridge Street Press (Little, Brown) in 2025.

J.S.Monroe/Jon Stock is represented by Will Francis at Janklow & Nesbit (+44 207-243-2975; queries@janklow.co.uk). For film and TV rights for all J.S. Monroe thrillers, please contact Emily Hayward Whitlock at The Artists Partnership (+44 207 439 1456).