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Jonathan Coleman was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1973.

The following year, he worked in London for The New Review, a literary magazine. From 1975 to 1981, he worked in book publishing, first at Alfred A. Knopf and later as a senior editor and member of the editorial board of Simon and Schuster. In 1980, in a piece about publishing, he was profiled in Time Magazine as one of the best editors in the field.

From 1981 to 1983, he worked at CBS News as a producer and a correspondent, and where he initially began to investigate the story that led to his first book, At Mother's Request: A True Story of Money, Murder and Betrayal, published in 1985. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and made the New York Times bestseller list in both hardcover and paperback. Ibn 1987, it was the basis for a television movie.

At Mother's Request is a true crime account of the murder of Franklin Bradshaw, a Utah induistrialist who was murdered on July 23, 1978, by his Grandson, Marc Schreuder, at the instigation of his daughter, Frances Berenice Schreuder (1938-2004). Marc Schreuder was convicted of second-degree murder in 1982 and spent 12 years in the Utah State Prison. Frances Schreuder was convicted of first-degree murder in 1983 and spent 13 years in prison.