FICTION

THE LEAF BOATS by John Fink (St. Martin’s Press: $15.95; 208 pp.). Old “Dutch” Gillespie is one of those broad-shouldered, vigorous Chicago types, who, at an age when retirement would seem to be in the cards, instead takes on a young bride and ready-made second family, bringing his brood to eight. Certainly there is no hint of what lies ahead: the murder of his young wife, found covered with leaves, and a family that suddenly is very, very conscious of the frictions and strains among them; then, 17 years later, a copy-cat repeat in the rape and murder of the daughter, Hope, who bears the strongest resemblance to her dead mother. This is an eerie, taut, psychological study of a disintegrating and troubled family, and we’ll certainly not tip author Fink’s hand as he probes the common threads in the two murders.