Spy Dance

The Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff has been paid off by a French Industrialist to ensure that the U.S. will not come to the aid of the Saudi King when a military coup takes place. For good measure the Secretary of State has been recruited as well. Former CIA station chief Greg Nielsen is a somewhat believable hero. He has evidenced good judgement in the past when he argued for us to support the Shah of Iran against the fundamentalist revolution. He has an interesting affair with a beautiful Mossad agent. It's all about Saudi oil. A quite exciting book.

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.

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 yearslater? 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, butboth 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.

This was an action packed story that I enjoyed very much.Thehero of this story is Greg Nielsen. He is a former CIA agent whoescapes after being set up and assaulting a general. He assumes anew identity and starts a mew life in Israel. His past catchesup with him and he is blackmailed into taking part in a huge conspiracy to depose House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.He is ropedin 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 nonstopaction 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 downRead this book. You will not be dissapointed.

Out of the headlines and onto the page. Sometimes I couldn't keep track of what I was watching on CNN and what I was reading in the book. Loads of plot. Twists and turns. (...) spies. Middle-Eastern politics. American hero. The book has got soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture written all over it. A lot of fun.