Much like one of the main characters in his latest espionage thriller
Spy Dance, Allan Topol has two identities.
By day he is Allan Topol, lawyer. A partner at D.C.'s Covington & Burling,
Topol co-chairs the firm's environmental law practice.
By night, on weekends and whenever else hr can steal the time from his busy
practice, he is Allan Topol, novelist. Spy Dance, his third work of
fiction, was just published last month by New American Library, a division
of Penguin Putnam. The initial press run for this paperback original totaled
and impressive 300,000 copies.
Yet don't call Topol a lawer-turned-novelist. He hasn't abandoned the practice
of law for the life of a full-time novelist, nor has he any intention of doing so.
"I would find it personally daunting to look at a blank page every morning,"
says Topol. "Besides, I enjoy being a lawyer."
In contrast to the denizens of his spy novels, who often find it necessary to
shift allegiances, the 60-year-old Topol has shown an unusual degree of loyalty
to Covington & Burling in the course of his legal career. He joined the firm in
1965 after receiving a degree from Yale Law School and has never strayed.
Topol's work as the firm is perhaps befitting of someone whose undergraduate major
at Carnegie Mellon University was chemistry. Topol's practice primarily involves
civil and criminal environmental litigation. 1-Ic specializes in water, air, and
major hazardous waste enforcement cases, as well as international environmental
law and toxic torts. He is also a member of his firm's patent and intellectual
property practice groups.
According to Covington & Burling's Web site, Topol has represented such clients
as General Dynamics, General Motors, the Hughes Aircraft Co., IBM, Lever Bros.,
the Lockheed Martin Corp., the McDonnell Douglas Corp., the Northrop Corp., Procter
& Gamble, and the state of Washington on behalf of the Boeing Co., California on
behalf of Del Monte, Iowa on behalf of Armstrong-Pirelli Tire, and Pennsylvania on
behalf of Quantum.
Topol says that the reaction he has received from his clients when they learn he
is a novelist has been "fantastic and enthusiastic."
Theodore Garrett, the Covington & Burling partner who co-chairs with Topol the firm's
environmental law practice group, does not find this so surprising. "Clients know that
creativity is the hallmark of an excellent lawyer, and that creativity manifests itself
in Allan in many ways," Garrett says. "Writing is something he enjoys."
Topol 's practice has forced him to travel a great deal. He calculates that he has
averaged more than one trip a month to California Since 1982. His work has also taken
him to Europe and to the Far East. Such treks have brought him "a lot of airplane time,"
Topol explains, which he often dedicates to fiction writing. He writes his first draft
out longhand, so he doesn't even need to carry a laptop with him.
Topol says that he doesn't know how his tale is going to end when he first starts writing.
"The story develops as you're writing," he explains. He began Spy Dance with a relatively
detailed 10-page outline, which he was forced to alter as his writing proceeded. Once he
found his writing rhythm, he jettisoned the outline entirely. He worked on Spy Dance in
1999 and 2000 to meet his deadline in late 2000. In order to properly prepare to print and
market its books, New American Library requires its authors to submit manuscripts about a
year before release date.
Although Topol says that it takes him about a year to write a novel, Spy Dance has arrived
in bookstores more than two decades after his previous effort, A Woman of Valo,: That book,
published in 1980, and his 1978 novel, The Fourth of July War, were published in hardcover
by William Morrow & Co. Neither book found much of an audience, Topol admits, although The
Fourth of July War was translated into Japanese and was optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie
that was never made.
Topol suggests that the somewhat unsatisfactory nature of his earlier publishing experiences
and the demands of raising a familyTopol and his wife, Barbara, have four childrenled to his
fiction-writing hiatus. (It wasn't that he stopped writing entirely. In 1992, West Publishing
brought out Superfund Law and Procedure, which Topol co-wrote with Covington & Burling partner
Rebecca Snow.) But circumstances have changed now, and Topol says he no longer has any excuses
not to return to fiction. "1 don't play golf. I don't boat. And my children are grown up," he
explains with a chuckle.
The publication of Spy Dance has proved to be a relatively happy experience for Topol. In
addition to committing to the sizable first printing, New American Library declared Spy Dance
November's lead title of the month. This designation meant that the house provided increased
publicity for the $6.99 book, placing prominent ads in USA Today and arranging for Topol to
be interviewed by Armstrong Williams on Williams' syndicated television talk show. Early
indications are that the book is selling well. Topol's contact at Amazon.com recently e-mailed
him with the news that "Spy Dance is flying off the shelf."
Topol is pleased with more than just the marketing of his book. He also speaks happily of the
collaborative creative process involving his agent and his editor that resulted in the final
manuscript of Spy Dance.
Topol first praises his agent, Henry Morrison, whose services extend beyond just hawking his
clients' manuscripts to publishers. Morrison, who also was Robert Ludlum's agent, is noted for
his hands-on approach with his authors. Keeping close tabs on his clients while they are
writing, Morrison hopes to spot any plot kinks or flawed character development in their books
before manuscripts are delivered to the publisher. Topol described Morrison's comments as
specific and incisive. "You need constructive help," he says.
Topol also handed out kudos to his editor at NAL, Doug Grad. Grad returns the compliments:
"Allan worked hard and delivered a good book. He was a lot of fun to work with."
Grad says he has never received a perfect manuscript from an author, and Topol's was no
exception. "Generally, the manuscript was fine, but when placed under a microscope, things
needed fixing, and Allan cooperated fully."
What particularly struck Grad about the manuscript, which involves a former CIA agent on the
run and a scheme by a French industrialist to control Saudi Arabian oil, was how the widely
traveled Topol was able to make "all the scenes in foreign locales read true to life."
This is an assessment that Topol will certainly be gratified to hear. The action in Spy Dance
takes place in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, London, Paris, and Washington and centers
around a plot to overthrow the Saudi royal family. "Good stories with an international setting"
are the hallmarks of Topol's two favorite authorsGraham Greene and Leon Uris. And although he
isn't prepared to place himself in such exalted company just yet, he says that when he set out
to write Spy Dance, he didn't want to produce yet another "mindless thriller."
The novels Topol most enjoys reading are those that explore, he says, "exciting issues, exciting
problems." He points, for example, to Uris' Trinity, which within its fictional framework
provided a serious examination of the Irish troubles.
Although Topol realizes that most readers of spy thrillers are hungry for entertainment, he
strives to provide escapism based in reality. The fabric of Topol's fiction is woven from the
threads of real events and real-life concerns. Thus, the opening of Spy Dance takes place
against the backdrop of the June 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military compound housing
unit in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. And an overarching question in the book is just how firm a grip
on control King Fahd maintains in Saudi Arabia. Keeping in mind the history of Iran, for
example, "how long can the regime last is a real issue in Saudi Arabia," says Topol.
Topol says that he also tried to explore smaller, or at least more personal, themes in Spy
Dance, among them "the tug and pull between an individual and a bureaucracy."
Says Topol: "I've always been fascinated with how an individual agent manages to operate within
a bureaucracy." The protagonist of his book is a former spy who prides himself on being an
independent thinker and who possesses a hiatory of troubling encounters with authority figures.
One can't help but conclude that this rebel spy, who is something of a loose cannon, is
actually the alter ego of the outwardly staid and stable author. The spy and his creator share
some personal detailsthey both hail from western Pennsylvania and had fathers who ran small
family restaurantsand they both seem to view the world from the same political vantage point.
How much Topol identifies with his literary protagonist he doesn't say, but he does offer that
whatever verisimilitude Spy Dance displays is the result of careful research. Before putting
pen to paper, he read a great deal about the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia, a
nation he has never visited and is unlikely to gain entrance to, since his passport reflects
his 10 or so visits to Israel. About Saudi Arabia, he says it's "not easy to get good
information," but he read a dozen or so books about the country.
Some of the action in Spy Dance occurs on a kibbutz in Israeli. Although Topol has never lived
on a kibbutz, one of his daughters has had that experience. She proved an available and ready
source for some of his questions. He remembers fondly on one of his visits to Israel picking
fresh fruit in a litchi orchard, an idyll he has reproduced in an important scene in his book.
If two decades unfolded between the publications of A Woman of Valor and Spy Dance, readers
will not have to wait 50 long for Topol's fourth work of fiction. Tentatively titled The
Winthrop Affair; the novel has just been submitted to NAL and is scheduled to be published
in about a year. Another spy thriller, it will take place primarily in China and Taiwan. And
Topol is working on yet a fifth novel, which is also set in the Far Eastthis time in Japan
and Hong Kong. "Japan is an interesting place," says Topol, who has traveled to the country
on three occasions.
How does a busy practitioner who shoulders such a heavy workload manage to pursue a burgeoning
literary career as well?
"I catch the time that I can," says Topol, proving the old adage that if you're destined to be
a writer, you'll somehow find the time to write.
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