RICH BLOOD

An Alabama personal injury lawyer who seems to have modeled his professional and personal life on Better Call Saul is called on for his first criminal case.

Nobody disputes a few simple facts: That handyman Waylon Pike was carrying on an affair with his frequent employer Jana Waters; that he killed her husband, Dr. Braxton Waters; and that he confessed as much first to a casual acquaintance and then to the police. What’s under debate is whether the $15,000 Pike received for the murder came, as he told the cops, from Jana Waters, who just happened to withdraw that exact sum from her bank the day before, or from someone else. For most residents of Guntersville, this debate is purely theoretical since they’re sure that Jana hired her adulterous husband’s killer. Even Jana’s brother, billboard-loving attorney Jason Rich, finds it hard to believe that his long-estranged sister isn’t guilty. But he’s moved to defend her by the tearful pleas of her daughters, Niecy and Nola, whom he hasn’t seen for years, and by a more pressing threat by local drug king Tyson Cade, who’d taken advantage of Jana repeatedly to defer her payment of the $50,000 she owed him for his product. Cade doesn’t want Jana to testify in her own defense, and he really doesn’t want his own name to come up in the trial. So he demands that Jason not take the case, letting it go to a less-motivated appointed attorney, or if he does take the case, that he keep Jana off the stand. The obstacles would be formidable even for an experienced criminal defense attorney; a novice like Jason can only pray for a miracle. Bailey conscientiously sweats the details all the way to a dazzling but not entirely persuasive double-twist ending.

Workmanlike and consistently absorbing but not spectacular except for that eye-rolling epilogue.