J.S. Monroe

J. S. Monroe is the pen name of British author Jon Stock. He writes psychological thrillers and spy fiction. He is best known for his 2017 novel Find Me. His most recent thriller is His Final Patient (2026).

Jon Stock was born on 12 May 1966 in England. He was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset. He then studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Stock worked as a freelance journalist in London. He later moved to India as a columnist for The Week. From 1998 to 2000, he was a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. He was based in New Delhi during this period.

Stock returned to England and rejoined The Daily Telegraph. He edited the paper's Weekend section from 2005 to 2010. He left in 2010 to complete a trilogy of spy novels. He later returned to the paper before leaving again in 2015.

Between 1997 and 2017, Stock published six spy novels under his own name. These included Dead Spy Running (2009) and its sequels. Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to Dead Spy Running in 2008.

In 2017, he adopted the pen name J. S. Monroe. Under this name, he published his first psychological thriller, Find Me. The novel sold more than 150,000 copies. It was translated into fourteen languages.

Monroe followed with Forget My Name in 2018. The Other You appeared in 2020, followed by The Man on Hackpen Hill in 2021. These introduced DI Silas Hart, head of Swindon CID. No Place to Hide followed in 2023.

From 2020 to 2023, Stock held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship. He was based at Mansfield College, University of Oxford. In 2025, he published his first non-fiction book. The Sleep Room examines the experiments of psychiatrist William Sargant.

In August 2026, Monroe published His Final Patient. It was released by Head of Zeus and Bloomsbury. The novel centres on a psychiatrist who claims to predict death dates. He tells DI Silas Hart that he will die within five days.

AJ Finn praised the novel's research and structure. He called it "brainy, twisty, inventive." He added that it is "grounded in research at once fascinating and horrifying." Finn described Monroe's work as thrillers written for discerning adult readers.

His Final Patient continues the Silas Hart series begun in 2021. The novels combine police procedure with psychological suspense. Finn described Hart as "one of the most appealing sleuths in contemporary crime fiction."

Photo credit: HilaryStock, CC BY 4.0