In 2000, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association presented Olden with the Literary Fiction Honor Award for his New York crime novel The Ghost.
Marc Olden started his writing career with two works of non-fiction — a biography of Angela Davis and a study of cocaine in 1970s New York — before turning to the fiction genres of thriller and suspense.
Under the pen name Robert Hawkes, Olden began writing the Narc series, which follows a policeman on a counterdrug task force.
Olden's novel follows the exploits of Robert Sand, a martial arts expert and the only non-Japanese trained by a Japanese samurai master; it became the first in a successful series.
Many of Olden’s eastern-influenced books, such as Giri, Dai-Sho, Gaijin, Oni, Te, Kisaeng, and Krait reflect his lifelong study of the martial arts.