I actually WANTED to join the Red Army - and not a drop of vodka was in my system at the time.

Birth of an Assassin by Rik Stone

What do you get when you take a child who dreams of being a soldier in the Russian Army, train him in the Red Army and then get hunted by the KGB for helping his sisters escape the country?  Oh, and throw in a crush on a female soldier from boot camp.  A loose cannon Ruskie 007.  But you can drop the 007 part, because Jez Kornfeld doesn't need no stinking license to kill - that is an unnecessary step.

Put in a position to turn on his family and people of faith or to follow commands, the family wins out.  But actions have consequences - and the path that Jez has chosen has made him more than a few enemies.  With a dangerous person with a personal hatred of Jez, and the KGB tracking him - there isn't room to make a wrong move.  Heck, Jez probably has people on his high school chess club that are looking to settle a score!

This book is an action packed thriller that puts a nice twist on the genre with an original plot.  

This book is best enjoyed with a few shots of Kauffman Vodka taken before - call it liquid mood lighting!

Book Description:

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 in Red Square, Jez breaks up the rally but discovers 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. He has to find them a safe route out.

The journey begins, but he is unaware that his every move is being observed and that he has set in motion a chain of events that will plunge his life into a headlong battle to stay alive.

Author Bio:

Do children born into poverty become impoverished adults? It happens; pitfalls and roadblocks to advancement are everywhere. Rik Stone grew up poor amidst the slum-lands of fifties North East England, and left school at 15 without any academic qualifications.

He worked in the shipyards on a local river and later went into the merchant navy. Further down the line, he worked quarries in Essex in South East England.

But life was without horizons until, contrary to what his teachers had told him, he found he was capable of studying and completed a BSc degree in mathematics and computing.

Life got lucky for him when he took company pension at 50 and began writing. And now, here he is offering up his debut novel Birth of an Assassin, the first in a series.

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