Word: alchemists
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...Only an alchemist can save her. Dobecker interrupts his peacefully numb existence as a low official and his dabbling in mystical sciences when he briefly wins Tockbridge, and suddenly finds himself on film 24. Torn between fascination with her and concern for himself, he slips easily into the world of satanism and grave-robbing, where his familiarity with the occult keeps him in good standing. He eventually bugs the lawyer's confessional and saves Tockbridge's future--that's a happy ending in Washington these days. Having failed to find his philosopher's stone in either politics or his alchemical...
VOYEURS EN VOYANT, necrophiles, mystical wizards, and a comparatively sane alchemist--these are the creatures that roam Les Whitten's fantasy Washington after dark. Every night is Halloween, and playtime tricks and treats are almost as bizarre. But Watergate has rendered The Alchemist mysteriously reasonable, and, in the post-Nixon years, this strange novel seems just the sort of writing you'd expect from Jack Anderson's top aide--scandal-ridden, eerie, and oddly credible...
...saner times, The Alchemist would be just plain strange. The battle for high office pits Anita Tockbridge, an ambitious HEW official who tries to win the vice presidency on her back and in other positions, and Martin Dobecker, bureaucrat-alchemist, against the true freaks of a Washington fascinated with the occult...
THERE MUST HAVE been times between the Dita Beard escapade and Wounded Knee--stories in which Whitten played a key role--when he wearily concluded that they knew no limits. And those must have been the times when The Alchemist was written. Whitten does not seriously intend to reveal the power-broking behind the scenes--he only wants to tell a story beside which real government seems reasonable. The Alchemist is a diversion, and no thinly-disguised characters have set Washington astir...
...from his wooden one; Cardini, who commanded the attention of a jammed theater with nothing but a deck of cards and a pack of cigarettes; Thurston, Dunninger, Blackstone, Dante: all, all were gone or retired. People wanted facts, not illusions; it was the age of the scientist, not the alchemist...