Christopher Morgan Jones

Chris Morgan Jones worked for eleven years at the world’s largest business intelligence agency, and has advised Middle Eastern governments, Russian oligarchs, New York banks, London hedge funds, and African mining companies. The author of The Silent Oligarch and The Jackal’s Share, he lives in London.

Jones's latest novel is The Searcher.

Recently I asked the author about about what he was reading. His reply:

Postwar by Tony Judt

I’ve been reading this for a while; it must be half a million words and I’m in awe of all of them. It’s about Europe after World War II: the peace, the Marshall Plan, the reconstruction, the partition of Germany, the beginnings of the Cold War, the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe, Western Europe’s groping towards some kind of union. Tony Judt was an English historian, a formidable intellectual and a great writer who can take even the driest-looking material - Franco-German steel union? - and make it sing. Somehow he manages to hold the whole continent in his head over decades and answers dozens of questions that you never knew you had about about how the modern world came to be.

Collected Poems by Theodore Spencer

I came across Theodore Spencer while trying to find a reading for a memorial service. He was a professor of English at Harvard in the twenties, thirties and forties, but if the internet is anything to go by he’s not well known as a poet. He should be. He had a real genius for simplicity, and his love poems are beautiful.

Words were his delight;
Hers, a gay gracefulness
Of dancing and moving.
But when to the place
Of deep loving
(Starlight at midnight)
At last they came,
Their full communion
And consummation,
Their complete sphere,
Was stillness for her,
Silence for him.

The League of Frightened Gentlemen by Rex Stout

I’m working on the first draft of a new book at the moment, and trying to stay away from fiction because it can be hard to block out other voices. But Rex Stout is so good and so himself he never seems to interfere. This is the second Nero Wolfe book and everyone should read it.

Visit Chris Morgan Jones's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

--Marshal Zeringue