The Promise of the Pelican

In this melodramatic legal thriller set in coastal Alabama from Hoffman (Come Landfall), retired attorney Hank Weinberg returns to the fray after Julio Blanco, the brother of the caregiver for Weinberg’s developmentally delayed four-year-old grandson, is arrested for murder. When Blanco, a Honduran national working as a gardener at the Bay Resort Hotel and Golf Club, responded to a cry for help, he found local contractor Beau Shepherd bleeding from a stab wound on the golf course. The dying Shepherd embraced Blanco, staining the gardener’s shirt with blood. Afraid that he’d be suspected, Blanco fled the scene, taking with him some of the dead man’s cash, which he convinced himself Shepherd had wanted him to have. Weinberg, a Holocaust survivor, teams up with his attorney daughter, Vanessa, whose suspension from practicing after another DWI just ended, to defend Blanco. Some of the courtroom proceedings, such as disallowing leading questions on cross-examination, are unrealistic, and awkward prose doesn’t help (“A warmth began to move through her, like a strand of DNA marked conviviality unfurling with subsequent sips”). Grisham fans can take a pass. Agent: Joëlle Delbourgo, Joëlle Delbourgo Literary. (Mar.)