Book Review: Man in the Water by David Housewright

Former police detective turned freelance investigator Rushmore McKenzie and his wife Nina Truhler have been lured down to the Heggstad Marina by their friends Dave and Barb Deese. Despite it still being a fairly wintry mid-March in Minnesota, the Deeses are ready to take their first boat outing of the year, and have invited McKenzie and Nina to come cruise with them down the St Croix.

The last thing either of the couples expect is for McKenzie and Nina to be accosted shortly after entering the marina by a woman asking for help. According to the distraught Bizzy Woods, her husband EJ had unexpectedly decided to swing by the docks that morning to look at the water. Not being dressed for the occasion, she had waited in their car, scrolling through social media on their phone while he walked around. When she realized that over half an hour had passed and he hadn’t returned, she began to worry.

McKenzie and Nina help Bizzy search the marina for her missing husband, leading to Nina’s discovery of EJ’s corpse underwater. After calling the cops and giving their statements, they figure that that’s the end of their involvement with the tragedy… only their old friend, insurance investigator Maryanne Altavilla, comes knocking on their door with news. Apparently, EJ had held several valuable life insurance policies that the insurance companies are all disputing. The companies claim that EJ must have committed suicide, thereby voiding the terms of the policies. Bizzy, for her part, is suing the marina for negligence, as she strongly denies the suicide theory and thinks that EJ must have slipped and fallen into the water. It’s EJ’s adult daughter Nevaeh, however, who fully draws McKenzie into the controversy. She believes that her father was murdered, and she wants to hire McKenzie to get to the bottom of things.

McKenzie’s investigations lead him into EJ’s past in the military, and how that affected his life up till his untimely death. At the Potzmann-Schultz VFW post, he meets several of EJ’s friends, all veterans too. They want to know McKenzie’s story before they really open up to him:

“We all have stories,” Josh added. “This is the one place where you get to tell them aloud. No one’s going to judge you. In the outside world people look at you like you’re–well.”

 

“Do you have a story, McKenzie?” Shelia asked. “I heard you telling Marco that you were with the cops. I bet you have a lot of stories.”

 

“None worth mentioning,” I said.

 

“Don’t say that,” Josh said. “Don’t say that to us. We get a lot of people coming in here who didn’t serve. Neighbors, people who just like the place, and that’s cool. You wouldn’t be comfortable telling them your story, we get that. But us? Tell us your story, McKenzie.”

And so McKenzie does, earning their trust and, perhaps more importantly, willingness to help. The leads they provide prove invaluable as McKenzie digs deeper into what truly happened to EJ that cold March morning. But when unsavory secrets come to light and someone else dies, even Nevaeh will change her mind about the truth and plead with him to stop looking. Will he be able to help himself from continuing in his pursuit of justice?

McKenzie is a smart, dogged investigator whose unusual background informs so much of his own approach to solving mysteries. A cop who came into money and never looked back, his commitment to transparency has earned him a surprising number of allies. It helps, too, that he has an innate sympathy for his fellow human beings:

“One of the signs of good emotional intelligence, McKenzie, is empathy,” Brink told me. “An example of empathy is the individual’s ability to resist interrupting when someone is talking–or not talking. That’s because the minute you speak is the minute when you stop listening; stop learning. Not only that, when you interrupt, you’re telling your partner that you aren’t really interested in them; that you don’t care what they have to say. Tell me–were you taught this, or did you come by it naturally?”

 

“I’m a disciple of Steve Martin,” I said.

 

“The comedian?”

 

“He once said that sincerity is everything. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

I was genuinely surprised to discover that Man in the Water is the twenty-first book in the McKenzie series. It reads as fresh and accessible as if it were only a few books in. Sure there’s a fairly wide-ranging cast, but David Housewright makes it easy for readers to identify who’s who and understand their significance in our main characters’ lives. This engrossing entry is an excellent jumping-on point for anyone new to the series, and will certainly more than satisfy any established fans.