Spy Dance (Paperback)

by Allan Topol (Author)
Key Phrases: spy dance, Madame Blanc, General Chambers, Saudi Arabia (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Onyx (November 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451410130
• ISBN-13: 978-0451410139
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #544,379 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Action Packed Story!, December 29, 2001

By	Melvin Hunt (Cleveland,, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb First Novel - Write more like this!, April 5, 2002

By	Newt Gingrich (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews ("THE")

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.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Skip this dance, January 3, 2002

By A Customer

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.