JP Delaney – Author Biography
Early Life
JP Delaney is the pseudonym of Tony Strong, born in 1962 in Uganda. He studied English at University College, Oxford, and built a successful career in advertising before turning to fiction — experience that shows in his thrillers’ polished hooks and pacing.
Career
Writing as Tony Strong, he published crime novels in the 1990s. Reinventing himself as JP Delaney, he broke through with The Girl Before (2016) — a minimalist-architect thriller told in alternating timelines that became an international bestseller and a BBC/Netflix-style limited series. He followed it with twist-driven psychological thrillers including Believe Me (2018), The Perfect Wife (2019), and Playing Nice (2020).
Major Works
The Girl Before (2016) is his signature work.
Writing Style and Themes
Delaney writes sleek, high-concept psychological thrillers with architectural precision — houses, like plots, with hidden rooms. His recurring themes are control in relationships, the unreliability of memory, technology’s invasion of intimacy, and the question of how well we can ever know a partner.
Legacy
The Girl Before became one of the defining domestic thrillers of the mid-2010s, cementing the “house with secrets” subgenre and proving the commercial power of the pseudonymous reinvention.
