Q&A with Otho Eskin

 

 

 

Otho Eskin is the author of the new novel Black Sun Rising, the latest in his Marko Zorn series. A lawyer and former foreign service officer, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

 

Q: What inspired the plot of your new Marko Zorn novel, Black Sun Rising?

 

A: We are living in dangerous times. Our traditional institutions and values as a nation are at risk. Civic discourse is deteriorating in this country, and deep divisions are beginning to tear us apart. With big money behind this movement. All this is laying the groundwork for a right-wing, authoritarian force to take over the country.

 

I had never thought it could happen in America. I knew it happened in Europe in the 1930s. Not just Germany and Italy. One by one liberal democratic governments fell (Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania) and democratic governments were challenged by extreme right-wing forces in France and England and elsewhere.

 

And it almost happened here in the States. A pro-Nazi party was ready to seize power. I felt I had no choice except to write a thriller about a neo-Nazi plot to overthrow the government.

 

Q: The writer Jon Land said of the book, “Forget about the old cliche ‘ripped from the headlines’...here is a brilliant, bracing and blistering book that may predict them instead.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: Black Sun Rising is a work of fiction based on objective facts, but Jon Land is absolutely correct about my latest thriller being a prediction. I certainly hope we are both wrong. 

 

Q: In our previous Q&A, you described Zorn as “a complicated man.” How does that play out in this new novel?

 

A: In Black Sun Rising Marko finds himself training recruits to fight in a Nazi paramilitary army – a recreation of the Nazi Brown Shirts, the military wing of Hitler’s Nazi Party.

 

Marko is disgusted by these recruits and their political opinions and hates what he’s doing – training them to overthrow the US Government. But at the same time, he feels personally responsible for the welfare of the men under his command. He is deeply conflicted about his relationship to these troops.

 

Additionally, Marko has a relationship with a woman whom he both despises and is obsessed with. He does not resolve this conflict.

 

Another example throughout the series is that although Marko is a police officer he refuses to use a gun. The reasons for this position involve deep conflicts within his own soul which he would rather not explore too closely. 

 

Marko is indeed a very complicated man.

 

Q: You spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Foreign Service--does that experience factor into your novels?

 

A: Black Sun Rising is set primarily in Washington, D.C., as well as Virginia.

 

Where my experience in the Foreign Service did influence the creation of the fourth Marko Zorn novel is that I was able to draw on my time spent in East Germany, Syria, and the former Yugoslavia - all oppressive, authoritarian regimes.

 

In Black Sun Rising, Marko Zorn investigates 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 and ultimately away from democracy. 

 

Q: Will you continue writing about Marko Zorn?

 

A: I hope so. So long as my health holds up, I intend to keep on writing. I doubt that I will run out of events that outrage me and topics to explore.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Otho Eskin.