1970?

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE (375 pp.)--Taylor Caldwell--Crown ($3.50).

"In 1932," says the hero of Devil's Advocate, looking back almost 40 years, the U.S. elected to the Presidency a man "whose twisted mind stands out against the black background of history like a conflagration." By his "Machiavellian villainy," the workers were induced to sell their birthright of freedom for a mess of security, the farmers were bribed with subsidies into fatted acquiescence, the middle class was almost obliterated.

Wars were plotted, says the hero, in order to keep the President and his party in power. After Germany's defeat, Russia was built up until she was strong enough to be a respectable antagonist. During World War III (in which Russia was destroyed) the Republican Party was liquidated and the U.S. Dictatorship formally established.

By the time of World War IV (with Britain) the Dictatorship had abolished the 48 states and organized the country into military sections. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, "those greedy and avaricious rascals," became the U.S. Politburo. Thus, the military ruled the new "Democracy," assisted by an executive echelon of bureaucrats and supported by the petted farmers.

The urban "masses" lived on greyly in the crumbling cities, without even cigarettes to solace their degradation. Curiously, a leading symptom of their despair was a marked rise in female homosexuality. Legions of psychiatrists, "the new vampires," policed the souls of citizens.

For this desperate situation the leaders of the U.S. Underground of 1970--the secret society of "Minute Men"--employed a desperate and ingenious remedy. They infiltrated the government, worked themselves into the highest positions, and there began to play devil's advocate with a vengeance. That is, they intensified the tyranny to such an intolerable degree that the people at last revolted. Ironically, it was of course upon their saviors that the chief fury of the people fell, and many a Minute Man perished in the freedom he had provoked.

In The Devil's Advocate, bestselling Novelist Caldwell (This Side of Innocence, Dynasty of Death) has laid aside her wand of romance and taken up the cudgel of politics from what can only be described as a new position, the Neanderthal Right. The only other remarkable thing about Devil's Advocate is that, in its first five weeks, it sold nearly 35,000 copies and according to Retail Bookseller, was the bestselling novel in the U.S. for a week or two.

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