Books in Brief: The Tiger Waits

The Tiger Waits, by Anton Myrer (Norton, 378 pp., $7.95). This is one of those ponderous power-in-Washington novels by someone who doesn’t quite understand how it really works. The ingredients are familiar—the world is poised on the brink of nuclear confrontation, there are miscalculations in the White House, there’s an improbable love affair. Myrer is obviously an avid novel reader. There’s a bit of Cozzens, a touch of Wouk, a large dose of Drury, and a good deal of Marquand. And the love affair, especially in its more intimate moments, reads like a bad parody of Hemingway. One of the best closing lines in fiction is Jake Barnes’s in The Sun Also Rises: “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ ” Now here’s Myrer’s improbable heroine, at the end of the first of many couplings: “‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it fun to think that?’ ” Enough. It’s that kind of novel.