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Novichok
The Novice Assassin
by
Ray Torbiak
Joe is a Canadian surgeon whose career obsession isolates him from his wife and family. When he undergoes surgery himself, he can’t resist the pain pills and becomes addicted. A shadowy transnational group blackmails him into some offthe-record medical work that he can’t refuse. COVID takes its toll and recedes, leaving Joe burned out and anxious. War breaks out in Europe after decades of peace, just as Joe receives a diagnosis: a fatal form of dementia. The ring of spies reaches out to him once more with an offer: a free, experimental drug that will augment his memory to miraculous capabilities, in exchange for his medical services as an assassin. A surgeon becomes a patient with his own fatal diagnosis. Unable to face oblivion, he barters his medical skills for an experimental treatment. Joe’s team of handlers guide him across borders, through traps, betrayals and army camps to his final house call.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." —George Santayana.
Ray Torbiak is a Canadian physician living in Ontario. His interests include twentieth-century history, the art of narrative-based medicine, music, trivia and hockey. Novichok is his first novel.
Contributors
- Author
- Ray Torbiak
- Editor
- John Carter
- Illustrator
- Eduardo Melendez Cerda