Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dark Entry | 2011 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 2 | Silent Court | 2012 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 3 | Witch Hammer | 2012 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 4 | Scorpions’ Nest | 2012 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 5 | Crimson Rose | 2013 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 6 | Traitor’s Storm | 2014 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 7 | Secret World | 2015 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 8 | All Hallows’ Eve | 2015 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 9 | Eleventh Hour | 2017 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 10 | Queen’s Progress | 2018 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 11 | Black Death | 2019 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 12 | The Reckoning | 2020 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
Kit Marlowe takes the real-life Elizabethan playwright and suspected government spy Christopher Marlowe and makes his covert activities the engine of a mystery series. Trow draws on the genuine historical uncertainty around Marlowe — his university years at Cambridge, his possible role as an informant for Walsingham’s spy network, and his violent death in 1593 — to build a plausible fictional detective from the fragments the historical record provides.
Dark Entry, the first book, opens at Cambridge and introduces Marlowe at the beginning of his adult life, already moving between the worlds of scholarship, theatre, and espionage. Across twelve books, Trow traces a loosely chronological arc through Elizabethan England, with each mystery tied to the political environment of the period — plots against the queen, religious conflict, and the rivalries of Elizabeth’s court all provide material.
The series is probably Trow’s most historically layered work, requiring readers to follow not just the mystery but the period context. Trow handles this without overloading the narrative, using Marlowe’s wit and irreverence to keep the books moving. The Reckoning (2020) brings the series to a close — fittingly, given what happened to the real Marlowe.