Who by Water by Greg Rhyno
Reviewed by Selena Mercuri
Greg Rhyno’s Who by Water returns readers to the world of Dame Polara, a heritage planner with a toddler, a shaky hold on work-life balance, and a growing reputation for unearthing more than just old buildings. What begins as a personal disruption with her ex-husband disappears while recording on Toronto Island quickly becomes a layered mystery, blending municipal corruption, buried memories, and a portrait of contemporary urban life. The book stands on its own; readers can easily follow along without having read the first installment, Who by Fire.
Rhyno’s Toronto is exacting and intimate. The city unfolds in streetcar rides down King, condo renderings at City Hall, and the tug-of-war between preservation and profit. Rhyno traces a map of the city’s emotional and physical topography—heritage buildings in Ossington, dive bars on the Danforth, and the quiet of Masaryk Park. Dame and her colleagues are working to save an arts hub on Ossington called the Merc, targeted for demolition and replacement by “forty storeys of glass and steel... branded as an innovative cultural centre for Trinity-Bellwoods: Bespoke Lofts.” The city’s tension between preservation and development mirror Dame’s own; the locations in the novel aren’t just backdrops; they are narrative forces, pressing against Dame’s attempts to move forward, reminding her (and us) that the past is never truly archived.
“The death at the heart of the novel is not just a puzzle to be solved, but a wound that reopens several others.”
The death at the heart of the novel is not just a puzzle to be solved, but a wound that reopens several others. When Dame’s ex-husband Adam is found dead near the Port Lands, suspicion circles his bandmates, his widow, a cryptic sketch hidden in a guitar case, and a man in a Hawaiian shirt who insists on being paid in cash. But this mystery sprawls inward as much as it spirals out. Every clue Dame uncovers is laced with the ache of memory, from her father's old case files to the guitar Adam once swore he’d never sell. The narrative carries the reader through cemeteries, music stores, basements, and backrooms, but always loops back to the deeper question: what does it mean to truly leave something—or someone—behind?
Who by Water excels in its control of tone and pace. Rhyno shifts seamlessly between plot and character, as well as between bureaucratic absurdity and emotional precision. The writing is sharp without being showy, and the action is interwoven with moments of hard-won insight: “The entire time she’d been loving or hating him,” Dame reflects after Adam’s death, “and the truth was, sometimes those two things weren’t all that much different.” Rhyno shows us how people mourn in public and in private, in committee meetings and crowded bars, over shared drinks and unopened letters.
Who by Water is rooted in the work of paying attention—to cities, to people, and to the long aftershocks of love and betrayal. The mystery drives the plot, but it is the characters, their relationships, and the unspoken histories between them that give the novel its shape and substance.
About the Author
Greg Rhyno is the author of Who by Fire, first of the Dame Polara Mysteries, and To Me You Seem Giant, which was nominated for a ReLit Award and an Alberta Book Publishing Award. His writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Hobart, Riddle Fence, The Quarantine Review, and PRISM International. He completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario.
About the Reviewer
Selena Mercuri is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and book reviewer. She is a publicist with River Street and a social media associate at The Rights Factory. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and studied Publishing at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, The Literary Review of Canada, The Dalhousie Review, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire, The Ampersand Review, and elsewhere. Selena was the recipient of the 2023 Norma Epstein Award for Creative Writing and a finalist in the Hart House Poetry Contest. In the fall, she will begin the University of Guelph’s Creative Writing MFA program.
Book Details
Publisher: Cormorant Books
Language: English
Paperback: 288 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1770867871