Spy Dance

Rating:
Summary: Skip this dance
Review: I have never started a book and been unable to finish it, especially an espionage novel that boasts to be in the same tradition of Ken Follett and Robert Ludlum. Unfortunately, there is always a first for everything. Spy Dance has an interesting plot that has the potential to be good, but the writing is so poor that I couldn't even finish half of the novel. The dialogue is cheesy and the characters are one-dimensional. You never get to really know the David, Daphna, Sagit, or Madame Blanc and they certainly aren't believable.
I can't even describe how bad this book is and can't believe it was published... Too bad, because as I said, it could be an intersting story.

Rating:
Summary: Dance The Night Away
Review: SPY DANCE is one of those novels whose premises are far too believable to be comfortable.

Former Teheran CIA station chief Greg Nielsen is forced to go underground and reemerges years later as an Israeli kibbutznik technologist who holds the keys to a reactionary coup in Saudi Arabia that is being manipulated by powerful Western oil interests.

I have to disagree with some other reviewers who are set on critiques of the story's timeline (Nielsen seemingly fails to age, despite the passage of time) and the "stock" quality of some of the characters (the bad guys are SO obviously bad). First novels do usually have flaws, and these are flaws that many novels of the genre share, first or not. Most of them never acheive the quality and pace of this book, which seizes your attention and holds it throughout.

All in all, SPY DANCE is a more than credible first effort.

Rating:
Summary: Twofor
Review: Spy Dance was a great read on the beach in Puerta Vallarta, even if some aspects that were hard to swallow. Nitpicking, Stafford Turner, the CIA Director under President Carter, was Stansfield Turner. More important, it is well-nigh impossible to accept the time frame. We are asked to believe that Greg/David, our former CIA hero, was station chief in Teheran under Carter and helped get the Shah out of Iran in January 1979, and that he is now operating/acting at least 26 years later. Why at least 26 years
later? Because you can't invent a president, as the author does, without dating him after the incumbent, and that has to be 2005 at least. Do the math. Then ask yourself the probable minimum age for a station chief in Teheran in the midst of a crisis. Is it probable that Greg/David was less than 35. Give him that age or even a bit less and 26 years later he has to be 61 or close to it. It's impossible to believe that. Furthermore, I have no problem believing that Greg/David knew Farsi and Arabic, but
both Hebrew and Russian as well. It would be interesting to know how he got himself established in Russia, or was it the Soviet Union. Then, too, why does the Mossad pick him up for the Kouresh murder? On the other hand, why quibble with a book that keeps one turning pages. Oh! As for twofor, I had in mind the Mossad woman who is at first suspicious and then works with him.

Rating:
Summary: Fast Fun Ride
Review: This book is the perfect accompaniment to the rubber chicken meal on a long flight. Beyond that, weird dialogue and preposterous politics can't elevate this book beyond being a way to spend a layover in O'Hare.

Topol has the potential to write a good spy novel. He's really good at taking different threads of events and weaving them into a satisfying conclusion. He can develop a good hero and heroine, and integrate the different and contradictory perspectives of the characters to get the reader into the overall plot.

However, one of his techniques is to use character dialogue as a way to inform the reader on the background context of the story. This can be a cool way to subtly use characters to aid in the overall narrative. Topol, doesn't really pull it off, though. Some of the dialogue exchanges are so cheezed you can't help but roll your eyes.

Also, the political context he tries to develop is really two-dimensional. He ought to have a good researcher for his next book in order to help get the political flavor more full. His presentation of Middle Eastern politics were really flat and at times outright preposterous. He needs to do better research on the different theological schools and their influence on Saudi politics, and how much influence different countries are really able to have on partisans. Who sympathizes with whom, and all that. I got the sense that he had written the bulk of this novel years ago. It seemed really out of date in its attempts to present a plausible political struggle.

Likewise, his villains were flat and boring. "Madame Blanc" was hilariously goony. It was almost like a parody of Clancy, after a while. Topol's badguys are SO obviously bad that it takes away from the overall tension after a while.

All in all, with better research and editing oversight Topol ought to be able to write a good spy novel. He's really good at integrating a lot of competing interests into a complex smorgasborg. If he could match the machinations of the plot with a more plausible and interesting premise, his next book will also be appreciated on the next flight.

Rating:
Summary: Superb First Novel - Write more like this!
Review: This is a superb first novel about a military coup in Saudi Arabia, a French oil company run by a megalomaniac woman determined to use the coup to seize control of Saudi oil away from the Americans and then use it to raise the price of oil and therefore her company's profits, an American CIA agent on the run and hiding in an Israeli Kibbutz and the efforts of Mossad and the American agent to sort everything out.

The novel starts with the very persuasive premise that the American rejection of the threat to the Shah was a major factor in his being replaced by Khomeini. Topol asserts that Jimmy Carter's Washington analysts grossly underestimated how radical and how anti-American Khomeini was and therefore were far too willing to have the Shah fall. Topol's bias is clearly that modernizing military are far preferable to reactionary religious dictatorship as a solution to a corrupt and decaying regime.

Topol then paints a very depressing (and largely accurate) portrait of a corrupt Saudi monarchy which maintains power through repression and which is not dramatically better than the Taliban in its treatment of women in public rights and legal rights. No one who has been excusing the Saudis' behavior toward their own population and toward the United States and Israel will feel comfortable with this section of the book.

Topol postulates that the Saudi system hangs between a reactionary terrorist faction that is growing in strength as the public despairs of declining standards of living and rising repression and a military coup by American trained Saudis who are modernizers and democratizers and who loath both the current system of corruption and the reactionary religious terrorists.

This is both an enjoyable book and a useful book in suggesting new thoughts about a country that is important but may be on the edge of substantial change.

Watching a Saudi cleric smile and laugh as bin Laden reported gleefully on the killing of Americans and listening to that Saudi cleric reassure bin Laden that there were many supporters of anti-American terrorism in Saudi Arabia ("my mother's phone kept ringing all day with congratulations" was a direct quote from the Saudi visitor) is a useful prelude for reading this novel and thinking about its implications.

Rating:
Summary: Skip this dance
Review: This was an action packed story that I enjoyed very much.The
hero of this story is Greg Nielsen. He is a former CIA agent who
escapes after being set up and assaulting a general. He assumes a
new identity and starts a mew life in Israel. His past catches
up with him and he is blackmailed into taking part in a huge conspiracy to depose House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.He is roped
in by several villains in this story namely Madame Blanc and General Chambers. He fights the forces of evil with a Mossad agent named Sagit and his step daughter Daphna. There is nonstop
action in this story. The plot is excellent. Greg Nielsen is in for a battle trying to stop the conspiracy from taking place. This is an exciting book that you will find difficult to put down
Read this book. You will not be dissapointed.