Dead in the Water (2026) is a psychological thriller by John Marrs. When the protagonist, Damon Lister, nearly drowns off the coast of Brighton, England, he has a near-death experience. While his life flashes before his eyes, he sees an image of a young red-headed boy. He is convinced that he killed the boy, but he has no memory of it. In fact, his memories of his childhood are generally patchy. Damon becomes obsessed with recalling more of his past through repeated near-death experiences, and what he learns has horrifying consequences for himself and his loved ones. The novel touches on themes of The Unreliability of Memory, The Destructive Nature of Obsession, and Biology Versus Personal Choices and Their Role in One’s Fate.

Marrs is the best-selling author of over a dozen psychological and medical thrillers. He is best known for his Dark Future series, which was adapted into the Netflix television series The One in 2021.

This guide refers to the 2026 Thomas and Mercer Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, child death, death by suicide, suicidal ideation and self-harm, mental illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, racism, pregnancy loss and termination, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Dead in the Water shifts between the first-person perspective of the protagonist, Damon Lister, and the third-person limited perspectives of secondary characters. The Prologue describes the moment Damon dies of drowning. The novel’s chronology then skips back to six months before his death and covers the events leading up to the day he dies.

Six months before his death, Damon and his ex-wife, Melissa Lister, challenge each other to try new things before they turn 30. Damon and Melissa got pregnant when they were married, but Melissa told Damon that she lost the pregnancy. They divorced when Melissa came out as a lesbian, but they remain on friendly terms. Melissa challenges Damon to go swimming in the ocean even though he’s afraid of open water. Damon gets caught by a riptide and loses consciousness. Melissa drags him back to shore and revives him. When he regains consciousness, he tells her that he remembered the image of a dead boy whom he thinks he killed.

Two weeks later, Damon begins hallucinating the dead boy whenever he’s alone. He goes with Melissa and her new girlfriend, Adrienne, to a fertility clinic. Melissa and Adrienne are planning on having a child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and Damon has agreed to be the sperm donor. In the middle of the meeting with the counselor, Damon hallucinates the boy. He runs away from the meeting, terrified.

Damon visits his foster mother, Helena Obugachu. Damon was raised in care homes after his mother died by suicide when he was 12 and his father died in an accident at work. Damon asks Helena if there are any records about a death of a child in his past. Helena reassures him that it’s just his mind playing tricks on him. However, he continues to hallucinate the boy with increasing frequency. Damon goes to a hypnotherapist in an attempt to recover more of the memory and learn the source of the vision. While under hypnosis, he sees the boy on the ground near a road and sees himself pulling something from his pocket, but he panics before he can access more of the memory, and the session ends.

Damon meets with Melissa at a café. She is worried because he has cut off contact with his friends since his hallucinations started. Damon tells her that he wants her to kill and then revive him so that he can attempt to access more memories of his childhood during a near-death experience like the one he experienced while drowning. Melissa refuses. Damon instead decides to look for someone online to kill and then revive him. He gets in touch with a woman called Laura Murray who agrees to help. A few weeks later, Laura goes to Damon’s apartment and begins to strangle him with a noose. She has no intention of reviving him. Before Damon dies, Melissa bursts in and saves Damon. Laura flees. When he regains consciousness, Damon tells Melissa that he saw a vision of his mother with the dead boy. Melissa reluctantly agrees to facilitate another near-death experience for Damon so that he can learn more.

While at work, Damon hallucinates his mother with the dead boy, and his mother is badly burned. Damon then goes to the fertility clinic to give his first sperm donation. On his way back to his car, he is attacked from behind by an unknown man who tells him, “You play until the end” (98).

The next day, Melissa comes over to facilitate another near-death experience for Damon. She drowns him in the bathtub and uses a defibrillator to revive him. When he regains consciousness, he tells Melissa that he has remembered the name of the dead boy: Callum Baird. He searches online and learns that Callum was murdered when he was 12 and that the murderer was never found. Damon goes to the street in London where Callum’s body was found, and he realizes that he used to live nearby with his mother. He suddenly remembers that his mother died after jumping from a window to escape a fire in the apartment.

The next day, Damon hallucinates Callum and his mother. With them is an infant child. Damon then visits Helena and tells her about his hallucinations and what he has learned about his mother’s death. He tells her that he plans to request his records from social services. Helena says that she doesn’t remember anything about Damon’s past, but she is lying.

Three weeks later, Damon receives his case notes. He learns from them that he was possibly considered a danger by children’s services. Damon asks Melissa to once again facilitate a near-death experience so that he can learn more. He threatens to back out of the IVF process if she doesn’t agree to it, so she reluctantly agrees. A few days later, Melissa goes to Damon’s apartment to drown and revive him once again. She makes him record a video explaining what they’re doing so that she has some protection from liability if he dies. Damon loses consciousness for 16 minutes. When he regains consciousness, he tells Melissa that he has had a new vision of a dead girl wearing a 2012 London Olympics shirt. He searches online and learns that the girl’s name is Daisy Barber. She was murdered when she was 13 years old, and Damon’s father, Ralf Lister, was convicted of the murder. Damon becomes convinced that his father killed all the people he keeps hallucinating: his mother, Callum, the infant child, and Daisy.

A few days later, Damon goes to his car to drive to Melissa’s house when he is attacked again by the same man who attacked him while leaving the fertility clinic weeks before. Damon fights the attacker off and runs him over with his car, killing him. He puts the man’s body in a dumpster.

Three days later, Damon goes to Helena’s house and confronts her with what he’s learned. Helena tells him that Ralf is alive and out on parole after having served time for Daisy’s murder. Damon finds where his father works and confronts him, and Ralf tells him to leave. Damon then returns to Helena’s house. She isn’t home, but she has left tapes of Damon’s childhood sessions with a therapist called Dr. Dahl and Dr. Dahl’s letter recommending that Damon go to a Dr. Fernandez-Jones for treatment. Damon listens to the tapes, and he learns that he had an infant brother whom the therapist believes died of sudden infant death syndrome. On the tapes, when the therapist asks Damon about his relationship with Daisy Barber, Damon attacks him, and the tape ends.

Meanwhile, Laura goes to Damon’s apartment. She’s concerned because she hasn’t heard from her accomplice, Garry, in days. She finds Garry’s car parked near Damon’s building. On the dashcam of the car is a video of Damon running Garry over and putting his body in the dumpster. She keeps the video.

Melissa encourages Damon to talk to his father again, and he goes to his father’s house and accuses him of murdering four people. They argue, and Damon violently attacks Ralf. Before he can kill him, Damon’s grandmother hits Damon over the head and stops the attack.

Meanwhile, Adrienne, Melissa’s girlfriend, finds the video that Damon made before the last near-death experience. She is horrified. She tells Melissa that she has to cut off contact with Damon, and Melissa reluctantly agrees.

Damon goes to Dr. Fernandez-Jones’s house. The doctor explains that he gave Damon electroconvulsive therapy when he was a child in an attempt to curb his violent impulses. He reveals that Damon killed Callum and his infant brother, Bobby, because they were taking his mother’s attention away from him. Damon killed Daisy because she rejected his affections. Damon attacks the doctor and leaves.

Damon then returns to his father’s workplace to confront him again. He learns that his father died from Damon’s violent attack. He goes to his father’s funeral. After the funeral, his grandmother tells him that she believes Damon set the fire in the apartment that killed his mother. She also tells him that Helena and Ralf were in a relationship and that Ralf took the blame for Daisy’s death to protect his son.

Damon goes to Melissa’s house to tell her what he’s learned. She and Adrienne tell him to leave. During the argument that ensues, Adrienne lets slip that Melissa actually terminated her pregnancy with Damon; it was not a miscarriage as he had believed. Enraged, Damon kills Melissa and Adrienne. He takes their bodies back to his apartment. Damon then contacts Laura, saying that he’s ready to die. He goes to Helena’s house to destroy the tapes and sees a woman leaving; she is Helena’s daughter, Sally, and she has a brain tumor that causes the same symptoms that Damon has, as well as violent behavior.

While Damon waits for Laura to arrive at his apartment, he hallucinates all the people he’s killed. Laura then kills Damon by drowning him in the bathtub. Three weeks later, Laura reflects on how she killed both Damon and his mother. Laura had been a volunteer at a helpline when Damon’s mother called for support. Laura encouraged Damon’s mother to die by suicide by setting a fire in the apartment. In the present, the police arrive at Laura’s office and arrest her for the murders of Damon, Adrienne, and Melissa.

Two years later, Sally, Damon’s half-sister, thinks about how she got an email from Damon scheduled to arrive after his death, in which he confessed to all his crimes. She had rushed to Damon’s apartment and found his body in the bathtub. He was still alive, but instead of saving him, she asphyxiated him with a handkerchief. She feels justified in what she did.