Set against the backdrop of Soviet, post-war Russia, Birth of an Assassin follows the transformation of Jez Kornfeld from wide-eyed recruit to avenging outlaw. Amidst a murky underworld of flesh-trafficking, prostitution and institutionalized corruption, the elite Jewish soldier is thrown into a world where nothing is what it seems, nobody can be trusted, and everything can be violently torn from him. Given the order to disperse and arrest a crowd of Jewish demonstrators, Jez breaks up the rally but finds his sisters in their ranks. Rushed for a solution, he sneaks the girls from under the noses of secret police and hides them in downtown Moscow. But he knows they will no longer be safe in Russia and that his own security has been compromised. His plan to cross into the Ukraine to a port on the Black Sea where he can bribe passage from Soviet soil for his sisters seems sound, but he is unaware that his every move is being observed and that he is setting in motion a chain of events that will plunge his life into a headlong battle just to stay alive.
Author
Rik Stone’s working life began in shipyards before he moved on to become a merchant seaman and, for reasons he won’t share here, on more than one occasion found himself stranded in the middle of nowhere. Later on, he worked in quarries and met some wonderfully rich and diverse characters. But then life tamed, maybe a little too much, when he moved into the IT industry. A surprise came like an episode from Tales from the Unexpected when he became interested in studying and worked through to gaining a BSc. degree in Mathematics and Computing. But it was his love of reading fiction gave him the ambition to write it and his broad experience of life and the confidence of education enabled him to do it. Rik and his wife share a home in Essex in the UK and they have loved, and continue to love, traveling the world; especially when taking it all in from a ship’s balcony.
