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The Cardamom Club
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
11 books9 followersJon Stock is an author who also writes psychological thrillers under the name J.S.Monroe, including His Final Patient, which was published in August 2026 (Bloomsbury). The Sleep Room, his first non-fiction book, was published to wide critical acclaim in the UK (Little, Brown) and America (Abrams) in 2025. ‘Compelling’ – the Sunday Times; ‘A gripping exposé’ – Financial Times; 'Lacerating' – The Guardian. The Sleep Room, currently in development as a TV series, investigates the controversial life and work of Dr William Sargant and champions the female patients who survived his often brutal treatments.
Jon's new J.S.Monroe thriller, His Final Patient, is about a psychiatrist who claims he can predict a patient's 'death day'. When he tells DI Silas Hart that he will die in five days' time, a chilling race against time ensues.
'His Final Patient is brainy, twisty, inventive... and, remarkably, grounded in research at once fascinating and horrifying,' says AJ Finn, author of the global bestseller, The Woman in the Window. 'It is, in other words, a JS Monroe thriller. Monroe writes thrillers for grown-ups: readers who admire sharp writing, readers who savour complex characters – characters like Silas Hart, one of the most appealing sleuths in contemporary crime fiction. The Hart novels are absorbing police procedurals that double as high-tension psychological thrillers (fans of Lisa Jewell, ready those nerves for jangling); but above all, they're mind-meddling, sleep-defying stories, the sort that remind you what real suspense feels like.'
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.
Jon's new J.S.Monroe thriller, His Final Patient, is about a psychiatrist who claims he can predict a patient's 'death day'. When he tells DI Silas Hart that he will die in five days' time, a chilling race against time ensues.
'His Final Patient is brainy, twisty, inventive... and, remarkably, grounded in research at once fascinating and horrifying,' says AJ Finn, author of the global bestseller, The Woman in the Window. 'It is, in other words, a JS Monroe thriller. Monroe writes thrillers for grown-ups: readers who admire sharp writing, readers who savour complex characters – characters like Silas Hart, one of the most appealing sleuths in contemporary crime fiction. The Hart novels are absorbing police procedurals that double as high-tension psychological thrillers (fans of Lisa Jewell, ready those nerves for jangling); but above all, they're mind-meddling, sleep-defying stories, the sort that remind you what real suspense feels like.'
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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 9, 2009
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.
August 13, 2020
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.
May 9, 2016
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.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews