Brad Pitt has bought the movie rights to “The Tiger,” but with all due respect to Mr. Pitt, there’s no way the movie will match Mr. Vaillant’s book. Cynthia Grenier is a Washington writer ...

When the tiger stalks, the book soars; when it hides, the book sags, but only a little. Vaillant is an obsessive researcher who marshals his battalion of facts in service to the story, which is a ...