About Timothy Burton Anderson
A Life Close to History. A Mind Built for Suspense.
Timothy Burton Anderson is an American lawyer who still practices full time in Utah. For most of his career he has worked where law, government and money meet, in local disputes and in negotiations in political and business centers around the world. He writes thrillers about what happens when those systems are pushed further than they were built to go.
The man behind the stories
The Novelist Who Chose the Law
His first novel, The Reign of the Stavka, led to an invitation on June 15, 1995, to join the Scoville, Chichak, Galen Literary Agency in New York. The agency’s clients at the time included Arthur C. Clarke, Margaret Truman, Nikolai Tolstoy, James Brady and Peter Ackroyd.
His agent expected a steady run of books. Timothy had a growing law practice, a wife, and seven young children. He chose the practice and the family, and put fiction on hold. As he puts it, writing is a solitary, inward pursuit, while law and family are a form of service, and he has never regretted the choice.
Four defining chapters
The experiences behind the author.
A life shaped by writing, investigation, law, history and extraordinary real-world experiences eventually became the foundation for Timothy Burton Anderson’s political and geopolitical thrillers.
Early writing
Reporting, Research and Real Stakes
Even in law school, Timothy was drawn to stories with real consequences. His investigation into the killing of Dr. Rulon Allred in Murray, Utah, became the basis for an unpublished novel, The Holy Mafia, whose screen rights he optioned to Ralph Andrews Productions at Columbia Pictures. When an NBC affiliate took up the case, it turned to him, and his research and sources informed its reporting.
He was also a regular contributor to the syndicated column of investigative journalist Jack Anderson. They were not related, a point he has been correcting for forty years.
Fiction • Representation • Ambition
Investigation
Hollywood, and a Lesson in Copyright
In late 1982, Timothy met with the leadership of MGM/United Artists. On May 3, 1983, with Michael Deaver, then Deputy Chief of Staff to President Reagan, in the room, he met Sylvester Stallone at Paramount Studios to discuss his 52-page treatment for Rocky IV.
The deal did not happen. The lawsuit that followed, Anderson v. Stallone, lasted six years and is now a standard reference on derivative works in copyright law.
JOURNALISM • RESEARCH • INVESTIGATION
LAW & INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Inside Systems of Power
His legal career has kept him close to public policy and government at every level, including meetings in Washington, D.C., some of them in the West Wing.
During the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics he served as Honorary Commander of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing at Hill Air Force Base, and flew in the back seat of an F-16 over the Utah Test and Training Range, earning a 9-G certificate. While doing legal work for a university laboratory with DARPA ties, he went to sea on a U.S. nuclear attack submarine out of Point Loma, San Diego.
LAW • POLITICS • INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
The return
Why He Came Back to Fiction
American politics has become more volatile, and the fights over who holds power more open. For a lawyer who has spent a career watching how institutions bend, that was a reason to start writing again.
His novels begin with a real weakness in a real system, then ask who would exploit it and what it would cost.
Blue, Red, and Dead starts with the Electoral College. The books that follow move to the last days of the Soviet Union and further back into history.
EXPERIENCE • PERSPECTIVE • RETURN TO FICTION
From experience to fiction
Experience becomes fiction.
Blue, Red, and Dead – when it’s too close to call, but not too close to kill. About the most confused and conflicted presidential election ever – pushing the American republic to the brink of collapse.
And Putin at the Gates – the secret battle at Hurricane Mesa – where (get ready for this), a young KGB agent named Putin on assignment in America in 1992, at the little-known and super-secret Battle at Hurricane Mesa – a battle that altered the geopolitical landscape of the world.