Lost Lake [Hardcover]

Phillip Margolin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

It's a beautiful summer night in Portland, Oregon. Ami Vergano, a young attorney and single mother, arrives at her son Ryan's Little League game with their tenant and new friend, Dan Morelli. When the assistant coach calls in sick, Morelli seems happy to help out. But then one player roughly blocks another, and a fight erupts. Before the game ends, Ami witnesses violence that shocks and horrifies her and makes her question everything she thought she knew about Morelli.

On the other side of the continent, in a cheap motel room in Washington, D.C., ex-mental patient Vanessa Kohler, a reporter for EXPOSED, a tabloid that specializes in alien-abduction stories, watches a piece on television about the Little League massacre and quickly places a call to the FBI. For years she's been telling anyone who will listen about a vast government conspiracy to conceal a secret military unit headed by Gen. Morris Wingate, a presidential candidate, and for years every-one has dismissed her stories. But when Vanessa sees Dan Morelli fighting, she believes she's found the key to proving that her theories are true.

Vanessa hires Ami Vergano to represent Morelli, who is charged with attempted murder, and Ami is drawn into Vanessa's paranoid world. Are Vanessa, a former mental patient, and Morelli, a confessed mass murderer, telling the truth about one of the nation's most respected soldiers and politicians? Or are their charges a product of two sick minds? Ami has to decide who -- and what -- to believe, in Phillip Margolin's most exciting and surprising thriller since his breakout bestseller, GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Vanessa Kohler wakes from a sound sleep in a California lakeside mansion to find her host, a young Congressman, near death--he's been tortured, his safe is wide open--and the man who seems to have attacked him, is about to flee the house, is Carl Price, someone she once loved. Missing are the documents that prove Vanessa's father, the General, runs a covert military unit of assassins who answer only to him. Once the General arrives on the scene and hustles her off to a mental hospital where she's held for more than a year, her charges are dismissed as the rantings of a crazy woman. A decade later Carl Price reappears, caught in an incident at a Little League game in Oregon that briefly makes the national news and thus brings him to Vanessa's notice again. But by now she's a tabloid reporter, so even those who don't know about her stint in the asylum won't take her charges against the General seriously. And Carl Price may have killed the Congressman, but he's the only person who can prove that the Unit exists; if Vanessa doesn't get him before the General has him killed, he'll never be able to corroborrate her story, and the General may well be elected President.

Vanessa's a more interesting, if less likeable and engaging heroine than Ami, the woman lawyer who tries to help the man she knows as Dan Morelli, a.k.a. Carl Price, who makes beautiful furniture, lives comfortably in the apartment over her garage, and is a surrogate father to her young son. But the official records of Carl Price reveal a whole other side of her friend and client, and when the psychiatrist to whom Dan has also revealed his alter identity and the General's secret is tortured and killed in the same way the Congressman was, she's not certain whom to believe. The complicated plot is a little over the top, but Margolin drives his thriller to its bloody denouement with the same fast pace and velocity that will probably drive it to the bestseller list, just like his previous books. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Like the lake of its title, Margolin's latest suspense novel (a hybrid with traces of legal thriller and whodunit and a big debt to The Manchurian Candidate) is smooth on the surface with tumultuous secrets lurking beneath. In Portland, Ore., lawyer and single mom Ami Vergano is pleased to take in handsome handyman Dan Morelli as a tenant, since he provides a positive male role model for her 10-year-old son, Ryan. Meanwhile, across the country in Washington, tightly wound tabloid reporter Vanessa Kohler spins elaborate paranoid fantasies (or are they?) involving personal danger and government conspiracy. These two women—and their respective plot threads—come together when Dan's volatility turns a Little League game into a crime scene, and Vanessa steps forward to support him, at considerable risk. But this is only the beginning of a labyrinthine plot built on twists and surprises. Hint: Vanessa's father is an influential general and political power broker. Margolin isn't the most original writer, but what he lacks in style he makes up for in clarity. Plotting is his strong suit. The artful arrangement of the story's episodes keeps the suspense high, and the author fills in the puzzle shrewdly, with small pieces from all over the chronology. The surprises keep coming, even after the story settles mostly into a courtroom drama, with Ami defending Dan on a high-stakes charge.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1ST edition (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060735023
• ISBN-13: 978-0060735029
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,350,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars JUST BECAUSE THERE IS NO PROOF DOESN'T MEAN IT DIDN'T HAPPEN, January 7, 2008

By 

Red Rock Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lost Lake (Hardcover)

When packing for a long road trip I always like to take authors like Philip Margolin along for the ride. His books on CD keep you alert and engaged and Lost Lake is no exception.

While there is a crime committed in Lost Lake (several in fact) there is no mystery to solve because you already know who-dunnit. The underlying question is why was the crime committed, and are the stories being told by the chief protagonists (Carl Rice and Vanessa Kohler) the real deal or just the delusions of a couple of paranoiac personalities.

It's up to their lawyer Ami Vergano to try to separate fact from fiction and determine the truth behind the story that began 20 years earlier with the brutal torture murder of a Congressman.

Deborah Hazlett is a talented reader and she deftly breathes life into Margolin's characters and keeps the story moving along at a lively pace. You find yourself pulling for Carl and Vanessa while still wondering if perhaps they really are crazy and you've been sucked into their deluded world.

If you enjoy a story that delves into the arenas of political and military cover-ups and is laced with tension and a touch of uncertainty you'll relish your journey to LOST LAKE.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Military-Politico Thriller Gives a Good Ride!, March 26, 2005

By 

Michael D. Trimble (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Lake (Hardcover)

Like a James Bond movie that begins with a huge stunt before the opening credits even scroll by, this book jumps right into the action with a vicious murder of a U.S. Congressman. The gruesome event actually happens nearly 20 years before the rest of the book takes place, but is central to the predicament the story's characters now find themselves.

The main players are: General Wingate the retired hard-charging Army General now running for President and someone who will do anything to keep secret the illegal murderous unit he ran while on active duty. His daughter Vanessa who witnessed the murder of the congressman and hates her father because she believes he was responsible for the death of her mother and much more. Carl Rice, was once Vanessa's high school boyfriend and is now a former army captain who served in General Wingate's secret unit, and Ami Vergano the young single mom and small time lawyer who will get swept up in the action and forced into defending Carl after he becomes involved in a scuffle that turns deadly at Little League game where Ami's son was playing. Little known to Ami though, is who Carl actually is, that Carl has murdered time and time again for General Wingate and has been on the run and in hiding from Wingate for the past twenty years. The incident at the ball field and the subsequent press coverage start in motion a series of events which make this book the thriller that it is.

What makes a good thriller? Well it has a have a great plot, creative subterfuge, devious betrayal, larger-than-life characters and almost always, murderous violence. This book by Margolin has all that and is a captivatingly good story. I recommend it as an easy, exciting read.

If you really enjoy thrillers, one of the all time best is, Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down, March 21, 2005

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Lost Lake (Hardcover)

During Vietnam, a powerful general ran a secret, elite unit of spies and assassins to carry out his private agendas--which included the murder of a United States senator. At least, that's what his daughter, Vanessa Kohler, has maintained for many years. But no one believes Vanessa, who has a history of serious mental illness. She's written off as paranoid, a crank--and the fact she works as a tabloid reporter doesn't elevate her reputation any.

Now Vanessa catches a glimpse of a man on the TV news, a man she thought long dead. He is one of her father's assassins. And if he is still alive, he is the one person who could prove the Unit existed. But the man, Carl Rice, now living under an assumed name, has his own problems--namely that he's been charged with attempted murder for intervening in a Little League game when a parent physically threatened the coach. He stuck a ballpoint pen in the guy's throat.

Caught in the middle of all this is single-mom lawyer Ami Vergano, who is Carl's landlord. The man has been nothing but gentle and friendly until this incident. So when Vanessa comes to her with her wild claims, demanding that Ami represent Carl, she tries to get out of it. But the more she hears, the more intrigued she becomes. There is a thread of truth to what Vanessa's story. And Ami, though she is not a criminal attorney, gets sucked in to the drama, all the while trying to protect herself and her young son.

This is a first-rate thriller reminiscent of the movie Conspiracy Theory. Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and sometimes they're not imagining things. It's easy to sympathize with Vanessa even as she makes one poor choice after another in her quest to prove her father, now a presidential candidate, is a cold-blooded murderer. Even Carl, a trained killer, is made sympathetic. I really could not put this book down.