Black Sun Rising
Marko Zorn #4
by Otho Eskin

A long-buried Nazi weapon resurfaces. America stands on the brink of destruction. One man must stop history’s darkest nightmare from happening again.

When Washington, DC, homicide detective Marko Zorn’s partner is murdered, his search for justice leads him deep into Black Sun, a violent neo-Nazi movement built from the ruins of WWII’s most sinister forces. Their goal: unleash a catastrophic attack that will plunge the nation into chaos.

To stop them, Marko must outwit a woman known as the Bride of the Apocalypse, navigate the treacherous ambitions of two of the world’s richest—and most ruthless—men, and confront a conspiracy stretching from Washington’s corridors of power to the shadows of the city’s underworld.

Can Marko save the country from annihilation?

A pulse-pounding thriller in the tradition of Baldacci, Clancy, and Patterson, Black Sun Rising delivers relentless suspense, razor-sharp political intrigue, and a chillingly timely story of unchecked hatred— and the one man willing to risk everything to stop it.

Black Sun Rising is the fourth book in Otho Eskin’s Marko Zorn series, which includes The Reflecting Pool, Head Shot, and Firetrap. Each novel can be read as a stand-alone or as a part of the series.

5 out of 5 fairies

Opening with a bang, and not losing momentum for a moment, this is one thriller that will have you turning pages late into the night. With the rise of fascism here in the states, this book is very timely. The high-level corruption, neo-nazis, domestic terrorism, it’s all too easy to imagine some of the events playing out in real time in the US. That said, the characters are believable, and the story has good pacing. The descriptions make it feel like you’re watching everything unfold before your eyes. Although part of a series, this works just fine as a standalone, so don’t worry if you haven’t read the other books in the series before. Definitely recommend if you enjoy fast-paced, high stakes thrillers!

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Otho Eskin published his first thriller, The Reflecting Pool, to great reviews and book club interest in 2020. It was selected as an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller and Suspense. The Reflecting Pool follows Marko Zorn- a Washington D.C. homicide detective who has a strong ethical compass but refuses to play by the rules. The sequel, Head Shot, also featuring Marko Zorn will be released in December, 2021. 

Before he turned to writing fiction, Otho Eskin served in the U.S. Army and in the United States Foreign Service in Washington and in Syria, Yugoslavia, Iceland and Berlin (then the capital of the German Democratic Republic) as a lawyer and diplomat. He was Vice-Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, participated in the negotiations on the International Space Station, was principal U.S. negotiator of several international agreements on seabed mining and was the U.S. representative to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He speaks French, German, and Serbo-Croatian. He was a frequent speaker at conferences and has testified before the U.S. Congress and commissions.

Otho’s career in the Foreign Service unknowingly prepared him for thriller writing later in life as he witnessed political corruption at every strata of society. While stationed in East Berlin during the cold war, the East German intelligence service (Stasi) operating on behalf of their Soviet masters, published a book entitled “Who’s who in CIA (correct title), translated into several languages and with wide distribution. This propaganda effort listed Otho and was intended to claim that he was a U.S. spy. (He was not). This was part of East German and ultimately Soviet, disinformation campaign to make the work of U.S. Foreign Service officers serving abroad more difficult.

Otho Eskin has also written plays including: Act of God, Murder as a Fine Art, Duet, Julie, Final Analysis, Season in Hell, among others, which have been professionally produced in Washington, New York and in Europe.

Otho is married to writer Therese Keane and lives in Washington, D.C.

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