Lost Lake
By Phillip Margolin
(Harper Collins, 2005 — 321 pages, $25.95)
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the The Lawyer's Bookshelf
March 28, 2005
You know there's trouble when the shattering climax of the legal thriller you're reading involves old payroll stubs and microfiche.
Phillip Margolin certainly tries hard, but Lost Lake, his eleventh novel, never generates excitement. The story begins in 1985 with the gruesome murder of Congressman Eric Glass. This poor fellow finds himself on the wrong end of a serrated knife in the study of his home in the exclusive neighborhood of Lost Lake, California. There is a single witness to the crime: Vanessa Kohler, Glass's intern, who just happens to be sleeping over at her boss's home that night. (Don't get your hopes up, she slept in the guest room). By the end of the first chapter, we even know the murderer's name: Carl Rice.
Revealing the killer's identity at the outset could have been an interesting approach — think of Double Indemnity — and you know there's lots more to learn about who Carl Rice is, and how he got to play the role of the human Cuisinart at the Congressman's mansion. The rest of Lost Lake is the long, dull answer to this seemingly-simple question (a lot like the Passover Seder, without wine).
After the murder, the book jumps ahead 20 years and to Portland, Oregon. There we meet Ami Vergano. Ami is not just a lawyer, bravely forging her way as a solo practitioner and single mom, but someone with time to paint landscapes good enough to sell at weekend art fairs. It's at one such event that she meets Daniel Morelli, who is selling handmade furniture in the neighboring booth. They strike up a conversation and within approximately five nanoseconds of meeting this stranger, Ami has invited him to be her lodger in the vacant apartment over her garage. Doesn't that sound like a really good idea?
Ami not only exercises sound judgment in the realm of tenant background checks (be glad she's not on your co-op board), but in the parenting department too — she allows Daniel to spend lots of unsupervised time with her 10-year old son Ryan.
The idyll of this make-shift family comes to a crashing halt one evening, when Ami brings Ryan to play in a Little League game. Daniel joins them and is asked by the coach to act as assistant coach in another parent's absence. Barney Lutz, the parent of a player on the opposite team, starts a ruckus after his son is tagged out on second base, and begins arguing with the coach. Just as the fight is really getting underway, Daniel steps in with his own approach to alternative dispute resolution: he sticks a sharp pencil into Barney Lutz's throat.
It's at this opportune moment that Ami begins wondering about who exactly is living over her garage, and at which Margolin begins the laborious process of weaving together the stories of Daniel Morelli and Carl Rice. Are Carl Rice and Daniel Morelli the same person? If so, what has Carl been doing for the past 20 years? How did he end up in Portland? And, most importantly, why can't this guy control himself when it comes to sharp objects?
The next thing Ami knows, Vanessa Kohler — Congressman Glass's former intern — has tracked her down in Portland and asked her to represent Daniel against the charges sure to flow from the unfortunate pencil incident. In yet another act of very poor judgment, Ami turns down the $25,000 retainer that Vanessa is willing to pay, and requests a mere $5,000.
Ami reluctantly agrees to take the case, though she's in way over her head. The last time she thought about criminal law was during the bar exam, and she has to call up a law school classmate to find out what an arraignment is. (Unfortunately we never learn the name of Ami's apparently very generous malpractice insurance carrier).
Ami learns lots of interesting things about Daniel in the course of representing him, starting with his real name which is — surprise!! — Carl Rice. Daniel/Carl grew up poor and met Vanessa many years ago, when they were in high school together. Vanessa, who ran in the cool, rich crowd, wouldn't give Carl the time of day until he beat up her abusive football-stud boyfriend in the library and started helping her with calculus homework. These sentimental beginnings soon gave way to a Summer of Love at Vanessa's family compound (replete with armed guards). Back then, Vanessa's last name wasn't Kohler, but Wingate. Her father is General Morris Wingate, a/k/a the Really Big Villain of Lost Lake.
Morris, who takes a liking to Carl, is a hugely corrupt billionaire at the epicenter of an international conspiracy to take over the world. Long ago he ran a top-secret, elite unit of former soldiers trained to kill whomever Morris wanted. Carl becomes a brainwashed recruit to this secret unit, and murders lots of folks at Morris's direction, including Congressman Glass. It never becomes clear what Morris's agenda is, other than becoming All-Powerful. In fact, when we meet him, Morris is a national hero running for President of the United States.
Vanessa, who for some reason has had serious issues with her dad ever since he killed her mom, is on a mission to expose him for the Evildoer that he is. But dad put Vanessa in an insane asylum for a year after she witnessed Glass's murder, and now no one believes a word she says. She also knows that once her dad finds out that Carl Rice, who abandoned the unit after Glass's murder, is alive, he'll hunt him down and kill him. It's now Ami's job to represent and protect Carl.
One almost-redeeming quality of Lost Lake is Margolin's effort to manufacture suspense as to whether Vanessa and Carl are telling the truth about the secret unit and Wingate, or whether they are two delusional maniacs out to destroy the reputation of a man who may be the next President. Even Ami has doubts. This technique might have successfully created the same doubts in Margolin's readers, had the entire story been told in the voice of Carl, Vanessa, or Wingate, but because Margolin employs an omniscient narrator, we've learned the truth with well over 100 pages remaining.
Happily, Margolin has a healthy sense of self unlikely vulnerable to reviews like this. You can see it on his website, where he tells how he was a successful criminal defense lawyer until 1996, when he became a full-time writer. He admits, though, to being a "self-taught writer," which explains a few things, and also confesses that he "would have loved to have an opportunity to ask somebody about writing when I was starting out." He may want to before he starts the next book.
