Lost Lake

This is one of Philip Margolin's twisty thrillers with a complicated set of characters and motivations, and a storyline that spins back and forth across several decades of time to weave a tapestry of conspiracy. A congressman is brutally murdered at his home in Lost Lake, California and his congressional aide and houseguest, Vanessa Kohler, walks in on the scene. She recognizes an old high school friend, Carl Rice, as the slayer and runs screaming from the house. Rice disappears--only to resurface more than two decades later in Portland, Oregon, under a different name, as an off-the-grid itinerant fine furniture maker. Single mom and new attorney, Amy Vergano, is impressed with his mild manner and quality work at a craft fair where they share neighboring booths, and she volunteers to rent a garage apartment to him when he mentions needing a place to stay. He becomes a positive role model in her son's life and so Amy is shocked when an argument at a little league game turns violent and nearly deadly because of this same man. Meanwhile back in Washington, DC, the news coverage alerts Vanessa that the man she thought long dead is still alive, and may be her only key to proving that her father, General Wingate, ran a clandestine and illegal team of assassins during the Vietnam war and afterwards. He is now a candidate for President and she has written a book warning people of his past activities. However, no one really believes Vanessa's stories, and no publisher will accept the manuscript, because word is out that she was confined to a mental institution after witnessing the murder, and that now she works as a tabloid reporter. She heads to Oregon to try and talk to Carl and to ask Amy to defend him in the upcoming trial. More people die, and certainly Carl has killed in his past, but everyone is being manipulated into believing something other than the truth.