Review: Lost Lake

Phillip Margolin has another winner in Lost Lake a legal thriller. Ami Vergano is a single mother in Portland, Oregon. She is trying to raise her young son after his father was killed in an accident. She is a lawyer struggling to start her own firm since the large one she worked for went under and also an artist.

She meets another artist and drifter, Dan Morelli, at an art showing and impulsively offers to rent him the apartment over her garage since her latest tenant has moved out and she needs the additional income. At first things are going quite smoothly. Dan is quite easy going and quickly develops a bond with her young son.

Then her world is turned upside down when Dan attends one of her son’s little league games and is asked to fill in as assistant coach. One of the boys on the team is a bully and when the coach suspends him, the father, who is also a bully comes on field and starts to attack the coach who is a much smaller man. At this point, Dan’s instincts takeover and he nearly kills the attacking father by stabbing him in the neck with a mechanical pencil and also hurts a cop that comes at him from behind to try to stop him. Another cop winds up shooting Dan and he is hospitalized and arrested for attempted murder and assault on the cop.

Ami is shocked by the violence she sees but nothing prepares her for what is to come. Next Vanessa Kohler, an ex-mental patient and reporter for Exposed which is a tabloid similar to the National Enquirer, shows up and hires her to be Dan’s lawyer. Vanessa has for years tried to expose the concealment of a secret military unit that was run by General Morris Wingate and carried out numerous murders, and things of that nature for his own gain. No one will believe Vanessa or publish her manuscript detailing this unit since she has no evidence to back up her claims and she spent a year in a mental institution. This is why, although she is highly intelligent and a good writer that she cannot get a job at a decent paper.

But when Vanessa sees the coverage of the Little League escapade, she sees Dan Morelli’s face and knows that her proof is alive but she has to get to him first before the General has him killed. Dan was a member of the secret military unit and had been assumed dead. The General is quite wealthy and respected and also running in the current race for the presidency of the United States.

Ami is caught in the middle and has no idea whether to believe Dan and Vanessa’s stories or if they are just two sick minds working together. This is a good fast paced read that will keep you wondering just as much as Ami, and if their story is true, how will they ever prove it.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Gina Metz - RAM

Book Review: Lost Lake