Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Let Him Have It, Chris | 1990 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 2 | The Wigwam Murder | 1994 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 3 | The Many Faces of Jack the Ripper | 1998 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 4 | Who Killed Kit Marlowe? | 2001 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 5 | Vlad the Impaler | 2003 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 6 | Boudicca | 2003 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 7 | Cnut | 2005 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 8 | Spartacus | 2006 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 9 | The Pocket Hercules | 2006 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 10 | El Cid | 2007 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 11 | War Crimes | 2008 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 12 | Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer | 2009 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 13 | A Brief History of Vampires | 2010 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 14 | A Brief History of Cleopatra | 2010 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 15 | Enemies of the State | 2010 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 16 | The Adventures of Sir Samuel White Baker | 2011 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 17 | The Thames Torso Murders | 2011 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 18 | Murder by Mistake | 2012 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 19 | Ripper Hunter | 2012 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 20 | Swearing Like a Trooper | 2013 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 21 | The Last Gentleman of the SAS | 2014 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 22 | The Black Book | 2018 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 23 | Interpreting the Ripper Letters | 2019 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 24 | Richard III in the North | 2020 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 25 | The Killer of the Princes in the Tower | 2021 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 26 | The Charge of the Heavy Brigade: Scarlett’s 300 in the Crimea | 2021 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
| 27 | The Hagley Wood Murder | 2023 | M.J. Trow | Buy |
M.J. Trow’s standalone non-fiction reflects the same historical interests that drive his fiction. He has returned to Jack the Ripper multiple times across his career — The Many Faces of Jack the Ripper (1998), Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer (2009), Ripper Hunter (2012), and Interpreting the Ripper Letters (2019) — approaching the case from different angles in each book. His interest is clearly analytical rather than sensationalist, treating the evidence with the same skepticism he brings to historical sources in his other work.
Beyond the Ripper, the non-fiction catalog spans several centuries of history. Books like Boudicca (2003), Vlad the Impaler (2003), and Spartacus (2006) form a loose series of popular history biographies written for general readers. His military history titles include The Charge of the Heavy Brigade (2021) and The Last Gentleman of the SAS (2014), which draw on his interest in British military history. Who Killed Kit Marlowe? (2001) sits at the intersection of his non-fiction and his Kit Marlowe mystery series, examining the historical evidence around the playwright’s death.
The collection spans from 1990 to 2023, giving it the character of a career’s worth of accumulated research interests rather than a single planned project. Readers interested in any of Trow’s fictional series will often find relevant non-fiction counterparts here — the Ripper books connect to the Lestrade series, the Marlowe book to Kit Marlowe, and the classical biographies to the Roman-set fiction.