American Notes Candidates

Gary Hart bade farewell to his Senate years at a party in Washington last week and took steps toward two possible new careers. On the political track, the Colorado Democrat launched an exploratory committee for his 1988 presidential campaign. This week bookstores will begin stocking copies of Hart's first solo attempt at fiction, The Strategies of Zeus, an arms-control thriller. The book features a Vice President who manipulates his doddering Commander in Chief into secretly launching a killer satellite. The hero is a Montana-born arms negotiator who exudes an "aura of separateness (that) made him seem . . . strong but elusive." For readers who might draw parallels to present- day political figures, Hart offers the standard disclaimer: "Any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental."