Laura is an antagonist and secondary point-of-view character in Dead in the Water. She is first introduced in John Marrs’s The Good Samaritan (2017). As the name of the book implies, Laura, the eponymous good Samaritan, sees herself as someone who helps others by killing them. She targets those whom she regards as suffering and “relieves” them of their suffering by taking their life. She gets a sense of near-erotic “euphoria” and satisfaction from killing. She satisfies this impulse through volunteer roles that put her in proximity to vulnerable people, like a crisis helpline and a nursing home.

Laura’s compulsion to kill serves as a point of contrast for Damon’s behavior. While Damon initially feels wracked with guilt over the people he has killed, Laura feels justified and satisfied with her actions. She rewatches the videos she takes when she kills people over and over to emotionally recreate the high she feels from taking a life. Laura also gets satisfaction from stalking—hunting—her victims. When her first attempt on Damon’s life is thwarted, she takes her time to harass and terrify him before attempting again. Her careful, calculated approach is another key point of contrast with Damon’s impulsive, uncontrollable urge toward violence. By the end of the novel, Laura is arrested and convicted for the murders of Damon, Melissa, and Adrienne.

Helena is a secondary protagonist and point-of-view character. She had a career as a foster parent who cared for “more than a hundred and fifty young people” over the decades (365). Helena is Black and has “Afro-style, [formerly] raven-black hair” that is “now almost completely white” (45). She dated Ralf, Damon’s father, before he went to prison. They had one child together, Sally. At the opening of the novel, Helena’s health has badly declined. She has suffered a series of strokes that have left her frail and partially immobilized on her left side. She uses her strokes as an excuse to not provide Damon with answers to the questions he asks her; she claims that she has simply forgotten.

Helena is a complex character whose good intentions lead her to make morally questionable decisions. She first met Damon when he was 12 years old when Ralf begged her to take him in following the death of Damon’s mother. Although she initially declined, when she saw how sad and vulnerable he was, she agreed. While she wanted to help Damon, her decision to pull strings on his behalf to protect him kept Damon from social services that might have been better able to treat and support his unique condition. Similarly, rather than going through normal psychological services, Helena turned to experimental ECT treatment and “brainwashing” in an attempt to erase Damon’s memory.

At the end of the novel, Helena is completely paralyzed by a stroke. Her own daughter, Sally, kills her to put her out of her misery.

Melissa is a secondary point-of-view character. She first met Damon when she was 13 years old, and they bonded over being “unfamiliar faces amongst the crowd” (133). Melissa was a “former army brat” and moved around a lot as a child. She shared countless “firsts” with Damon: “love, marriage, divorce, and now death” (133). Melissa and Damon married soon after high school, but their relationship floundered. The last time they had sex, Melissa became pregnant. She had an abortion because she was determined to pursue her career goals of becoming a paramedic. However, she lied to Damon and told him it was a miscarriage. Soon after, Melissa confessed to Damon that she is gay. They divorced but remained close.

Melissa met her wife, Adrienne, at work. By the opening of novel, Melissa and Adrienne are trying to have a baby and start a family. Melissa asks Damon to be the sperm donor. Melissa knows how badly Damon wants a chance to be the father he never had growing up. She also feels lingering guilt over lying to him about the termination.

Melissa’s continuing attachment to Damon, and her guilt over how their relationship went, leads her to become increasingly entwined in his obsessive attempts to have NDEs in order to access repressed memories of his childhood. This leads Melissa to take immoral, even paradoxical action. As she points out to Damon, they are trying to bring a life into the world, not pursue death. This drives a wedge between Melissa and Adrienne as Adrienne attempts to free Melissa from her close relationship with Damon.

Damon ultimately kills Melissa and Adrienne when he learns that Melissa terminated her pregnancy during their marriage and is attempting to cut Damon out of her life for good.

Ralf is Damon’s father. For much of Damon’s adult life, he believed that Ralf had died in an accident at work. However, over the course of the novel, Damon learns that the reality is much more complicated.

Ralf is a complex figure. When Damon was very young, Ralf was overwhelmed with the demands of parenthood and often left Damon and his infant brother, Bobby, alone. However, he still loved his sons. As he tells Damon, “You boys were the only good things in my life” (216). Ralf struggled to cope with Bobby’s death, but he still did his best to provide for his family. His criminal activities, assault, and theft with a deadly weapon resulted in prison sentences.

Ralf’s imperfections are clearly shown through his actions around the deaths of Callum and Daisy. Ralf accidentally hit Callum with his car, but he fled the scene, leaving his 12-year-old son, Damon, to handle the situation. He attempted to make amends for this tragedy by taking responsibility after Damon killed Daisy. This lie, although coming from a place of concern and care, ultimately had tragic consequences since it allowed Damon to further avoid taking responsibility for his actions and made it harder for him to receive appropriate treatment for his condition.

Sally is Helena and Ralf’s daughter and Damon’s half-sister. She is a very minor point-of-view character in the novel, but her perspective is essential to understanding Damon’s behavior. Helena explains that when Sally was a child, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that resulted in headaches and nosebleeds. The tumor is inoperable, but its growth was controlled through the use of steroids. Helena believes that Sally developed a fascination with death when she witnessed her classmate Poppy get run over by a car at the age of 10. However, Sally reveals that she deliberately pushed Poppy in front of the car because of Poppy’s racist bullying of Sally, who is biracial.

This background suggests that Sally shares the same homicidal impulses as Damon, although differently motivated. Since Damon also suffers from headaches and nosebleeds, it is implied they have the same hereditary condition that causes a tumor resulting in violent behavior. Similarly, like Damon, she has hallucinations of the people she has killed. However, whereas Damon is motivated by feelings of anger and abandonment, Sally is motivated by her skewed sense of justice. As she reflects, she killed Damon, Poppy, and Helena “each for a very different, altruistic, reason” (374).