Is there a “try to lock, skip if timed out” operation in C#?

Ed’s got the right function for you. Just don’t forget to call Monitor.Exit(). You should use a try-finally block to guarantee proper cleanup.

if (Monitor.TryEnter(someObject))
{
    try
    {
        // use object
    }
    finally
    {
        Monitor.Exit(someObject);
    }
}