Lost Lake has aplot that tries to be complex but ends up being convoluted and cliched.
The twists offered by the author hold no surprises and the characters seem forced in their every interaction with one another.
The dialogue is average at best, itself not necessarily a bad thing but it is paired with poor action that displays the author's lack of research.

For example: Mr. Margolin created a character with a black belt in karate but did not put the effort into research of even ten minutes online to find any of the traditional methods that such a trained martial artist would employ in combat. Suffice to say a "drop kick" is used in professional wrestling or in football, not in martial arts. A roundhouse kick or heel kick are normal accepted English terms used to describe real maneuvers.

Certainly this is a pet peeve of mine, having an interest in martial arts, but it serves to highlight the fact that the author has not done all his research. Errors in terminology may not seem important to those who do not know the difference, but to those who do? Well, I won't be reading any more Margolin. With Robert Crais and Lee Child writing high-action crime/thriller novels that are better written and better researched, there is no room in my brainspace for second-rate crime fiction.