Marc Olden

Marc Olden (1933-2003) was an American novelist, born Marc Clarence Olden in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised by his mother and stepfather, the graphic designer Georg Olden. He began with non-fiction, including a biography of Angela Davis, before moving into prolific genre fiction, writing the nine-book Narc series and the Black Samurai novels under pseudonyms alongside work published under his own name, including Poe Must Die (1978), a historical thriller pitting Edgar Allan Poe against a secret society, and Book of Shadows (1980). His fiction spans hardboiled crime, martial-arts adventure, and historical thriller, built around fast plotting and a period's worth of researched detail rather than a single recurring hero.