The Cardamom Club

by Jon Stock

Raj Nair, a young British Asian doctor, is posted to Delhi. It's his first time in India, his first job with MI6, and not everyone is pleased to see him. Ambitious and patriotic, he is soon forced to question his own loyalties, particularly when his father is arrested in Britain on spying charges. Raj realizes he is up against a secretive, colonial organization working at the very heart of Whitehall: the Cardamom Club. Is it responsible for a chilling sati and other brutalities at odds with a modern, progressive India? Can his father really be a traitor? And will Raj expose the Club before it destroys him?

355 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Jon Stock is a novelist who writes spy and psychological thrillers. The Sleep Room, his first non-fiction book, was published in the UK on 3 April 2025 (Little, Brown). It was published in the US on 22 July 2025 (Abrams).
After reading English at Cambridge, Jon became a freelance journalist, writing investigative and arts features for the Observer, Private Eye, the Telegraph and the Times. For two years, he was a foreign correspondent in New Delhi before returning to become Weekend editor of the Telegraph in 2005 and to write espionage novels. Dead Spy Running, part of the Daniel Marchant Spy Trilogy, was optioned by Warner Bros. with a screenplay written by Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan.
In 2015, he became a full-time author, writing psychological thrillers as J.S. Monroe. Find Me has been translated into fourteen languages. Jon is currently a Royal Literary Fund Bridge Fellow and is a vice chair of the Marlborough Literature Festival in Wiltshire, where he lives with his wife, the photographer Hilary Stock. They have three adult children.

Reviews

[Nat De-Freitas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really badly written thriller - the pace was off, the characters were flat and predictable, and it didn;t do the premise any justice. I'd avoid.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been sitting on my shelf for years and I finally picked it up to read. It was a little more than okay. It was a slow starter and took a while to set up the plot. Once the action started, however, it had me turning the pages and it had just turned into a potential thriller when it ended in a somewhat rushed manner, as if the author was trying to tie up all the loose ends within 30 pages. I would have liked more of the book to do the ending justice. Overall enjoyable though, and an eye opening view of Indo-British relations. Just a shame there wasn't more about cricket.

[Mark Baines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting construct and situation considering the opinion, behaviour, feeling of a british asian, examines the conflict in loyalties and relationship with others, in both new and old counties. Is one ever really accepted and how does one become so. Worth a read for that alone, but this is more than that as the jacket notes advise.