FICTION

REFINEMENTS OF LOVE by Sarah Booth Conroy ( Pantheon : $22; 301 pp. ). Conroy can’t quite rewrite history, since Henry Adams had the foresight to burn any documents that might have cast light on his wife’s untimely death, but she can take a good, cold, fictional look at it. What she comes up with--the story of events leading up to Clover Adams’ death/suicide/murder--is a surprisingly engrossing tale of a plain woman, too smart for her own good, married to a distant, unaffectionate man too impressed by his own heritage. Adams, the grandson and great-grandson of presidents, looks like a prime murder suspect to Conroy at the beginning of the story Clover suspects him of having an affair, and possibly impregnating, a woman she finds too beautiful and too superficial to endure. Even if that were not so, he keeps such a distance that Clover’s exasperation increases. By the time she reaches for what she thinks are the nose drops--which leave her just enough time to scribble an accusatory farewell before expiring--the reader believes Adams absolutely capable of the dastardly deed. A funny, creepy mix of high history and low camp.