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The Houseboat
Local outcast Rigby Sellers lives in squalor on a dilapidated houseboat moored on the Mississippi River. With only stolen mannequins and the river to keep him company, Rigby begins to spiral from the bizarre to the threatening. As a year of drought gives way to a season of squalls, a girl is found trembling on the side of the road, claiming her boyfriend was murdered. The townspeople of nearby Oscar turn their suspicions toward Sellers.
Town sheriff Amos Fielding knows this crime is more than he can handle alone. He calls on the regional marshal up in Minnesota, and detective Edward Ness arrives in Oscar to help him investigate the homicide and defuse the growing unrest. Ness, suffering his own demons, is determined to put his past behind him and solve the case. But soon more bodies are found. As Ness and Fielding uncover disturbing facts about Sellers, and a great storm floods the Mississippi, threatening the town, Oscar is pushed to a breaking point even Ness may not be able to prevent.
Town sheriff Amos Fielding knows this crime is more than he can handle alone. He calls on the regional marshal up in Minnesota, and detective Edward Ness arrives in Oscar to help him investigate the homicide and defuse the growing unrest. Ness, suffering his own demons, is determined to put his past behind him and solve the case. But soon more bodies are found. As Ness and Fielding uncover disturbing facts about Sellers, and a great storm floods the Mississippi, threatening the town, Oscar is pushed to a breaking point even Ness may not be able to prevent.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 8, 2022
139 people are currently reading
4092 people want to read
About the author
Dane Bahr
7 books71 followersDane Bahr was born in Minnesota. He lives in Washington state with his wife and sons. He is the author of The Houseboat.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 234 reviews
March 11, 2022
A woman walking down the street in the middle of the night is naked and covered in blood. A couple driving by spot her and help her get to the authorities. She's not saying much expect that her boyfriend had been shot at their campsite while they sleep in their tent.
The small town of Oscar, Iowa never seen such a sight. Never heard such a story. Sheriff Fielding calls in for help. A detective from Minnesota, Edward Ness, arrives to assist.
The town assumes Rigby Sellers is behind the murder. The odd, crude, and social outcast (and that's putting it mildly 🤮) has been the talk of the town for years and he seems like just the suspect they need to have a word with.
What an exceptional debut from Dane Bahr. This is a bleak, gritty, and nasty little gem that is tough to recommend to a general audience due to its graphic nature. Faint of heart need not apply here. The atmosphere is palpable. You feel as though you've been transported to the swap where Rigby's houseboat sits with flies buzzing all around and the stink of squalor suffocating you as bile rises up your throat. I did say this was bleak, right?
A book I enjoyed but not too sure who else will. You know you and what you like so if you think you have the stomach to enter Rigby's wretched world then by all means have at it. If not, then steer clear, because this ain't no beach read. 4 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for my complimentary copy.
The small town of Oscar, Iowa never seen such a sight. Never heard such a story. Sheriff Fielding calls in for help. A detective from Minnesota, Edward Ness, arrives to assist.
The town assumes Rigby Sellers is behind the murder. The odd, crude, and social outcast (and that's putting it mildly 🤮) has been the talk of the town for years and he seems like just the suspect they need to have a word with.
What an exceptional debut from Dane Bahr. This is a bleak, gritty, and nasty little gem that is tough to recommend to a general audience due to its graphic nature. Faint of heart need not apply here. The atmosphere is palpable. You feel as though you've been transported to the swap where Rigby's houseboat sits with flies buzzing all around and the stink of squalor suffocating you as bile rises up your throat. I did say this was bleak, right?
A book I enjoyed but not too sure who else will. You know you and what you like so if you think you have the stomach to enter Rigby's wretched world then by all means have at it. If not, then steer clear, because this ain't no beach read. 4 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for my complimentary copy.
March 21, 2022
Dane Bahr is a writer.
First- to all my Goodreads friends- do NOT take this 5 star rating as a recommendation. Few readers will want to read this book. And even fewer will thank me if I did recommend it.
My first impulse was for a 4 star review. But not with that ending.
And I have read some of the other reviews. Just now.
This WAS an ending. Exactly like life. All life in the natural world and most especially a human's on the Earth. Change. Guaranteed constantly. As the Fieldings converse on my page 182 re his saying he doesn't understand the world these days (1960) and she replies that: Yes, Sara said, everyone feels that way because every day is new and no one has lived it yet.
No quotation marks. Very abrupt. Narrator and place focus change. All of this was incredible for a debut novel. He has a masterful conceptual expression for the water. For nature. For the gray of endless grief. For the insanity of no core. For succinct pressure at the very nerve end of the paragraph.
Will many people like this dark, bleak and at the same time exact positioning posited here? Nope. It's as real as 4th stage cancer. Change and death. It's just when and how. Not if.
That's the exposure of this novel. It's not only ideology opposed to the Hallmark "eyes". And I believe it is also only one of about 5 books that I have ever read where 2 alcoholics in full flight are prime characters. And both with strong reasons for death wishes.
Ironically, it was serendipity monthly pick from the cover alone. And when I saw it was upper Mississippi Minnesota/ Iowa. That's a keeper. Did NOT know it would be this brutal, cutting, relentlessly real.
I do not recommend this book. Noir? Darker.
For those of us who have seen some things that are the worst of the worst? We may recognize some beasts here. Some of us might know that Sheriff Fielding will go to do the same thing tomorrow. See the worst again as long as breathing and policing goes on.
And the river will come and erase. And the ground will rise and decline. It's just a matter of time.
First- to all my Goodreads friends- do NOT take this 5 star rating as a recommendation. Few readers will want to read this book. And even fewer will thank me if I did recommend it.
My first impulse was for a 4 star review. But not with that ending.
And I have read some of the other reviews. Just now.
This WAS an ending. Exactly like life. All life in the natural world and most especially a human's on the Earth. Change. Guaranteed constantly. As the Fieldings converse on my page 182 re his saying he doesn't understand the world these days (1960) and she replies that: Yes, Sara said, everyone feels that way because every day is new and no one has lived it yet.
No quotation marks. Very abrupt. Narrator and place focus change. All of this was incredible for a debut novel. He has a masterful conceptual expression for the water. For nature. For the gray of endless grief. For the insanity of no core. For succinct pressure at the very nerve end of the paragraph.
Will many people like this dark, bleak and at the same time exact positioning posited here? Nope. It's as real as 4th stage cancer. Change and death. It's just when and how. Not if.
That's the exposure of this novel. It's not only ideology opposed to the Hallmark "eyes". And I believe it is also only one of about 5 books that I have ever read where 2 alcoholics in full flight are prime characters. And both with strong reasons for death wishes.
Ironically, it was serendipity monthly pick from the cover alone. And when I saw it was upper Mississippi Minnesota/ Iowa. That's a keeper. Did NOT know it would be this brutal, cutting, relentlessly real.
I do not recommend this book. Noir? Darker.
For those of us who have seen some things that are the worst of the worst? We may recognize some beasts here. Some of us might know that Sheriff Fielding will go to do the same thing tomorrow. See the worst again as long as breathing and policing goes on.
And the river will come and erase. And the ground will rise and decline. It's just a matter of time.
March 18, 2022
Every so often, certain quarters of the high literary establishment — male-dominated corners, usually — decide as one to lift up a new author and his debut work as a fresh example of "haunted" and “elegiac" and "burningly American" literature. Typically these novels feature weather as metaphor to an overbearing degree. They also feature scenes in which hard-bitten men, being beautifully inscrutable and charismatically unknowable, smoke cigarettes and nurse drinks and stare hauntingly into the American middle distance, thinking hard-bitten thoughts only hard-bitten men can know. ("Ness, Fielding, and Clinton stood on the dike of the river, looking over the shimmering floodplain, smoking cigarettes and toeing rocks with the tips of their shoes, searching for something to say.")
This is what's known as "style," and in certain quarters of the high literary establishment — male-dominated corners, usually — this is celebrated blindly to the exclusion of things like character development, story arc, narrative coherence, etc. Call it Tim Johnston Syndrome, after the most egregious example of this kind, THE DESCENT, a novel in which men brood at epochal scale from broken porches or behind the wheels of primer-pain-splatted pickup trucks with cigarettes or bottles in hand, deferential women stay offstage so the men can ponder their cracked visages and the charismatic ruins of their choices made and unmade. ("They were quiet then. They sat there looking at nothing in particular. The rain beating down. The wet grass glistening under porchlight. Fielding knew Ness was in no mood to talk about it. Maybe never would be" and "They didn’t speak then for a very long while, just leaving themselves to sit and drink and spit, just staring off into the rainy night, with its thunder in the hills and hidden ghosts.")
And the spoken words, when they come, can often be excruciatingly banal: ("I tell yeh, Fielding said. I’m bout liable to believe anythin these days. I swear. Nothin seems to puzzle me anymore. Jest when I think, yep, that’s bout the craziest thing, somethin else comes along. I’ve stopped believin that I know the answer. With that they watched the rain without letting go of a single word.")
THE HOUSEBOAT, by Dane Bahr, is well-written for those who like that scorched-biblical-plain, look-at-me, fussed-over-Richard Ford style. ("Leaves at the treetops appeared like a frayed scrim to a celestial theater" is one example that pokes like a broken bone through the story's skin; "He stood a moment contemplating some dull thought, his dark eyes gazing through those ridiculous glasses into the caged forest where strands of sunlight slanted like thread and he shifted his stare toward his stool where black flies already leaped in a viscid ballet" is another.
On a story level? Meh, especially given that this novel has been marketed and promoted as a crime novel. There's no kinetic crackle, no "zing" of something immensely interesting massaging your temples. There's no suspense, which can be forgiven given that THE HOUSEBOAT is clearly not schematically set up to be anything like a thriller. But what's harder to forgive is the weak, thready pulse of pleasurable uncertainty on every page and in every passage, a sense that should be more apparent no matter how literary this book's aspirations are. (A great example is Urban Waite's stellar debut, THE TERROR OF LIVING, which thrums with unanswered questions; I mention this because Waite has blurbed THE HOUSEBOAT as a worthy peer.)
But, when you remove the clothes from this particular emperor, what you have is this: In 1960 Iowa, a teen is killed. We see the killer do it. We get to know the killer's sad, sick, never-had-a-chance existence in excruciatingly granular detail. He kills some more. The sheriff and an outside investigator pretty much know who did it and see him a number of times but are somehow unable to corral him on or away from the dilapidated river houseboat on which he lives. Everybody broods and seethes and stirs awake from shallow sleep. A big thing happens in the final pages. Nothing feels resolved. Life, such as it is, goes on. The end.
I personally did not feel the Sallis-meets-McCarthy-meets-Faulkner prose, or its dense atmospherics, made up for the murky, muddy deficits of its storytelling. And given that the prose itself is a mishmash of overmannered and pitch-perfect, demanding the reader step out of the story to admire it, the novel's primary strength is also an occasional weakness.
I didn't hate THE HOUSEBOAT. But neither was I dazzled by it to the point of blindness to its dead zones. Particularly its masculine ones.
This is what's known as "style," and in certain quarters of the high literary establishment — male-dominated corners, usually — this is celebrated blindly to the exclusion of things like character development, story arc, narrative coherence, etc. Call it Tim Johnston Syndrome, after the most egregious example of this kind, THE DESCENT, a novel in which men brood at epochal scale from broken porches or behind the wheels of primer-pain-splatted pickup trucks with cigarettes or bottles in hand, deferential women stay offstage so the men can ponder their cracked visages and the charismatic ruins of their choices made and unmade. ("They were quiet then. They sat there looking at nothing in particular. The rain beating down. The wet grass glistening under porchlight. Fielding knew Ness was in no mood to talk about it. Maybe never would be" and "They didn’t speak then for a very long while, just leaving themselves to sit and drink and spit, just staring off into the rainy night, with its thunder in the hills and hidden ghosts.")
And the spoken words, when they come, can often be excruciatingly banal: ("I tell yeh, Fielding said. I’m bout liable to believe anythin these days. I swear. Nothin seems to puzzle me anymore. Jest when I think, yep, that’s bout the craziest thing, somethin else comes along. I’ve stopped believin that I know the answer. With that they watched the rain without letting go of a single word.")
THE HOUSEBOAT, by Dane Bahr, is well-written for those who like that scorched-biblical-plain, look-at-me, fussed-over-Richard Ford style. ("Leaves at the treetops appeared like a frayed scrim to a celestial theater" is one example that pokes like a broken bone through the story's skin; "He stood a moment contemplating some dull thought, his dark eyes gazing through those ridiculous glasses into the caged forest where strands of sunlight slanted like thread and he shifted his stare toward his stool where black flies already leaped in a viscid ballet" is another.
On a story level? Meh, especially given that this novel has been marketed and promoted as a crime novel. There's no kinetic crackle, no "zing" of something immensely interesting massaging your temples. There's no suspense, which can be forgiven given that THE HOUSEBOAT is clearly not schematically set up to be anything like a thriller. But what's harder to forgive is the weak, thready pulse of pleasurable uncertainty on every page and in every passage, a sense that should be more apparent no matter how literary this book's aspirations are. (A great example is Urban Waite's stellar debut, THE TERROR OF LIVING, which thrums with unanswered questions; I mention this because Waite has blurbed THE HOUSEBOAT as a worthy peer.)
But, when you remove the clothes from this particular emperor, what you have is this: In 1960 Iowa, a teen is killed. We see the killer do it. We get to know the killer's sad, sick, never-had-a-chance existence in excruciatingly granular detail. He kills some more. The sheriff and an outside investigator pretty much know who did it and see him a number of times but are somehow unable to corral him on or away from the dilapidated river houseboat on which he lives. Everybody broods and seethes and stirs awake from shallow sleep. A big thing happens in the final pages. Nothing feels resolved. Life, such as it is, goes on. The end.
I personally did not feel the Sallis-meets-McCarthy-meets-Faulkner prose, or its dense atmospherics, made up for the murky, muddy deficits of its storytelling. And given that the prose itself is a mishmash of overmannered and pitch-perfect, demanding the reader step out of the story to admire it, the novel's primary strength is also an occasional weakness.
I didn't hate THE HOUSEBOAT. But neither was I dazzled by it to the point of blindness to its dead zones. Particularly its masculine ones.
February 13, 2022
I was lucky enough to land both a print arc and audio download of this book. And having just DNFd my most recent audiobook, the timing couldn't have been better. I jumped right in!
The short chapters and beautifully terse writing, along with the fantastic narration, made this an absolute dream to listen to. Set in the 1960's in the backwater town of Oscar, the grisly murder of a young man compells the local sheriff to reach out for help. Detective Edward Ness ends up on scene, and as they work together to identify a suspect, all eyes turn towards Rigby Sellers, a strange and depraved fellow who keeps company with a set of female manniquins he dressed in lingerie in his rotting houseboat on the river.
The book oozes atmosphere, as does its gorgeous cover. It's dark, it's a little twisted, and it held me rapt the entire way through. You'd never know it was a debut.
The short chapters and beautifully terse writing, along with the fantastic narration, made this an absolute dream to listen to. Set in the 1960's in the backwater town of Oscar, the grisly murder of a young man compells the local sheriff to reach out for help. Detective Edward Ness ends up on scene, and as they work together to identify a suspect, all eyes turn towards Rigby Sellers, a strange and depraved fellow who keeps company with a set of female manniquins he dressed in lingerie in his rotting houseboat on the river.
The book oozes atmosphere, as does its gorgeous cover. It's dark, it's a little twisted, and it held me rapt the entire way through. You'd never know it was a debut.
October 7, 2021
An excellent debut novel slotted right for the higher tiers of the rural noir genre. Not a typical favorite of mine, to be honest, but when done right (and this one very much is) there’s a certain almost musicality to it. Mind you, it’s a sad tune, a lament in a way, there’s bleakness here, grime, desperation, but it’s haunting in its own way, a haunting melody of a story.
1960s on the coast of Mississippi river is the setting for this cops chasing criminal story. The basic premise of it is actually very basic indeed. There’s a local creep who dilapidated residence gives the book its title, a creep who turns murderous when his desires can no longer be contained by manikins and peeping, and now there’s a proper crime to solve. A crime serious enough that requires outsourcing assistance in form of a city detective.
The detective, a man haunted by the untimely tragic death of his wife and child seven years prior, a man who tempts death because he doesn’t get much joy out of life, arrives, teams up with the local sheriff and together they proceed to solve the crime.
Ok, strictly from a police procedural perspective this isn’t the most satisfying of tales, because you know who the perp is, they all but know who the perp is, but fail to apprehend him or make the case stick, time and again. But from a character driven dramatic literature perspective, this is excellent. It draws you right in and holds on tightly to you until the ride is over. I read the entire book in one sitting, it wasn’t even a long sitting either, it just sped by. There was just something to the writing, a mesmerizing sort of darkness. Noir at its finest.
So yes, a very enjoyable, albeit a pretty dark, heavy and disturbing read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
1960s on the coast of Mississippi river is the setting for this cops chasing criminal story. The basic premise of it is actually very basic indeed. There’s a local creep who dilapidated residence gives the book its title, a creep who turns murderous when his desires can no longer be contained by manikins and peeping, and now there’s a proper crime to solve. A crime serious enough that requires outsourcing assistance in form of a city detective.
The detective, a man haunted by the untimely tragic death of his wife and child seven years prior, a man who tempts death because he doesn’t get much joy out of life, arrives, teams up with the local sheriff and together they proceed to solve the crime.
Ok, strictly from a police procedural perspective this isn’t the most satisfying of tales, because you know who the perp is, they all but know who the perp is, but fail to apprehend him or make the case stick, time and again. But from a character driven dramatic literature perspective, this is excellent. It draws you right in and holds on tightly to you until the ride is over. I read the entire book in one sitting, it wasn’t even a long sitting either, it just sped by. There was just something to the writing, a mesmerizing sort of darkness. Noir at its finest.
So yes, a very enjoyable, albeit a pretty dark, heavy and disturbing read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
June 5, 2025
2¼⭐
Ɱ◎◎ĐႽ…
⬧ Short Story ⬧ Murder Mystery ⬧ Grit-Lit ⬧ Spare Purply-Prose
This was a dark little story involving a murder investigation. The main suspect is somewhat dispossessed, he lives on a dirty houseboat and is definitely “off his rocker” so to speak. He was really quite the character.
Unfortunately, the spare writing style left me feeling completely lost as to what was going on most of the time. Also, I didn’t really get what the trial sections were about…like WHO was on trial? I’m assuming it was the houseboat guy (I forgot his name already), but I’m not sure.
⬧Narrated by: 🎙️William DeMeritt, Anna Caputo, Stacy Carolan, & Angela Bates📣 William DeMeritt was the main narrator and performed most of the entire book. The other three had excessively short sections narrated as part of a trial.
Total Score 4.14/10⬧Opening-4⬧Characters-4.5⬧Plot-4⬧Atmosphere-5⬧Writing Style-5⬧Ending-4⬧Overall Enjoyment-4
Ɱ◎◎ĐႽ…
⬧ Short Story ⬧ Murder Mystery ⬧ Grit-Lit ⬧ Spare Purply-Prose
This was a dark little story involving a murder investigation. The main suspect is somewhat dispossessed, he lives on a dirty houseboat and is definitely “off his rocker” so to speak. He was really quite the character.
Unfortunately, the spare writing style left me feeling completely lost as to what was going on most of the time. Also, I didn’t really get what the trial sections were about…like WHO was on trial? I’m assuming it was the houseboat guy (I forgot his name already), but I’m not sure.
⬧Narrated by: 🎙️William DeMeritt, Anna Caputo, Stacy Carolan, & Angela Bates📣 William DeMeritt was the main narrator and performed most of the entire book. The other three had excessively short sections narrated as part of a trial.
Total Score 4.14/10⬧Opening-4⬧Characters-4.5⬧Plot-4⬧Atmosphere-5⬧Writing Style-5⬧Ending-4⬧Overall Enjoyment-4
January 31, 2022
For fans of Mindhunter and True Detective comes The Houseboat by Dane Bahr – an understated and atmospheric thriller set in 1960’s small-town Iowa.
Oscar, usually a peaceful farming town, is shaken when a girl is found traumatized on the side of the road, telling stories of a wild man in the woods that’s killed her boyfriend. Edward Ness, Minnesotan detective, is called in to assist – Sherriff Amos Fielding isn’t shy about needing the help, and the town needs a quick resolution to this unusual and unsettling crime. But neither of them know that the perpetrator of this crime is on a path leading nowhere good – and this peaceful countryside is heading for more darkness than they could possibly have prepared for.
The Houseboat is on the shorter side, but by virtue of some gorgeous writing, bigger on the inside. You’ll want to take your time with this one – Dane Bahr manages to evoke such a true sense of place and time that it’s hard not to almost see the novel playing out in the mind’s eye as it’s read. The language he uses is striking and simple, but not a word is out of place; and he wastes no time in taking the reader straight into the story. We know the who of the whodunnit from the start, but it doesn’t lessen any of the tension – we can also see that he’s clearly on a downward spiral, one he’s not content to head down without dragging others along with him.
This was such a surprising, melancholy, and engrossing read. I mentioned above it’s a shorter novel, and it’s just as well – I wasn’t putting this down until I was finished. Combining the midcentury Midwest with the tone and characters of a classic noir was superbly effective – the two complemented each other, the sunny cornfields contrasting with the brooding houseboat, its occupant, and the atrocities he committed. The town of Oscar and its inhabitants still feel vividly real to me after finishing the novel – as unassuming as it was, The Houseboat has made a huge impact.
Oscar, usually a peaceful farming town, is shaken when a girl is found traumatized on the side of the road, telling stories of a wild man in the woods that’s killed her boyfriend. Edward Ness, Minnesotan detective, is called in to assist – Sherriff Amos Fielding isn’t shy about needing the help, and the town needs a quick resolution to this unusual and unsettling crime. But neither of them know that the perpetrator of this crime is on a path leading nowhere good – and this peaceful countryside is heading for more darkness than they could possibly have prepared for.
The Houseboat is on the shorter side, but by virtue of some gorgeous writing, bigger on the inside. You’ll want to take your time with this one – Dane Bahr manages to evoke such a true sense of place and time that it’s hard not to almost see the novel playing out in the mind’s eye as it’s read. The language he uses is striking and simple, but not a word is out of place; and he wastes no time in taking the reader straight into the story. We know the who of the whodunnit from the start, but it doesn’t lessen any of the tension – we can also see that he’s clearly on a downward spiral, one he’s not content to head down without dragging others along with him.
This was such a surprising, melancholy, and engrossing read. I mentioned above it’s a shorter novel, and it’s just as well – I wasn’t putting this down until I was finished. Combining the midcentury Midwest with the tone and characters of a classic noir was superbly effective – the two complemented each other, the sunny cornfields contrasting with the brooding houseboat, its occupant, and the atrocities he committed. The town of Oscar and its inhabitants still feel vividly real to me after finishing the novel – as unassuming as it was, The Houseboat has made a huge impact.
April 29, 2022
I’d never heard of this author before but loved the cover and the description sounded interesting. It was a short audiobook, only 5 hours, so what the heck.
I don’t think I missed anything. My husband listened to it on a road trip and we discussed it. We both felt the story was interesting enough. Then it just ended without wrapping anything up. It felt like the author decided he was ready to move on so he quit. I’ve watched many movies like this lately, also. Is this some new fad?
I considered skipping the review but I need to vent, lol.
I don’t think I missed anything. My husband listened to it on a road trip and we discussed it. We both felt the story was interesting enough. Then it just ended without wrapping anything up. It felt like the author decided he was ready to move on so he quit. I’ve watched many movies like this lately, also. Is this some new fad?
I considered skipping the review but I need to vent, lol.
October 4, 2021
Oh boy was this NOT for me. What purpose did this serve? It wasn't particularly compelling and the characters were flat. No thank you.
August 4, 2022
Book • Review
The Houseboat
Dane Bahr
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
Out March 8, 2022
The Houseboat by Dane Bahr is a book that I did not expect to get so lost in, but that’s exactly what happened. Described as an atmospheric noir set in a small Iowa town in the 1960’s, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I entered into this book with any particular expectation of amazement. That being said, from the very first page to the very last, The Houseboat was as murky and dense as a swamp, in the best way possible. The atmosphere in this book stuck to me as I blazed through this small volume, and hasn’t really left my mind in the days since I finished it. It’s honestly a bit strange how this impacted me, to be quite honest; it almost felt like I was the only one who would read this book, because something about the experience of reading it was so immersive it felt personal.
But, enough gushing, what is this book about? A murder takes place in a small Iowa town, and big city detective Ed Ness is called in to assist the sherif in getting to the bottom of it. Ness has some serious demons, and must grapple with them while also trying to unearth the secrets of the small town.
This novel has some extremely well crafted characters, both “good” and “evil”, with big ol’ quotes around both of those categorizations. The character that truly stand out in this novel is Rigby Sellers, the pariah living on the houseboat with some seriously disturbing vices, and a heartbreaking past. There so many instances in this book that had me simultaneously transfixed and appalled. Enter with caution, as this is some unsettling stuff.
The thing about this book that I truly adored is the ever present sense of dread that seems to permeate this book. There is a quote from the book that I feel perfectly captures my feelings:
“It had frightened him like no other, in a way he couldn’t comprehend. It wasn’t the creatures necessarily, but the place and being in that place alone. The stillness of it all. The quiet that precedes horror.”
That is it, exactly. Much of this book is quiet and still, but every page seems to precede horror. And I loved it.
Thank you Counterpoint Press for the early copy. This releases March 8th!
The Houseboat
Dane Bahr
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
Out March 8, 2022
The Houseboat by Dane Bahr is a book that I did not expect to get so lost in, but that’s exactly what happened. Described as an atmospheric noir set in a small Iowa town in the 1960’s, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I entered into this book with any particular expectation of amazement. That being said, from the very first page to the very last, The Houseboat was as murky and dense as a swamp, in the best way possible. The atmosphere in this book stuck to me as I blazed through this small volume, and hasn’t really left my mind in the days since I finished it. It’s honestly a bit strange how this impacted me, to be quite honest; it almost felt like I was the only one who would read this book, because something about the experience of reading it was so immersive it felt personal.
But, enough gushing, what is this book about? A murder takes place in a small Iowa town, and big city detective Ed Ness is called in to assist the sherif in getting to the bottom of it. Ness has some serious demons, and must grapple with them while also trying to unearth the secrets of the small town.
This novel has some extremely well crafted characters, both “good” and “evil”, with big ol’ quotes around both of those categorizations. The character that truly stand out in this novel is Rigby Sellers, the pariah living on the houseboat with some seriously disturbing vices, and a heartbreaking past. There so many instances in this book that had me simultaneously transfixed and appalled. Enter with caution, as this is some unsettling stuff.
The thing about this book that I truly adored is the ever present sense of dread that seems to permeate this book. There is a quote from the book that I feel perfectly captures my feelings:
“It had frightened him like no other, in a way he couldn’t comprehend. It wasn’t the creatures necessarily, but the place and being in that place alone. The stillness of it all. The quiet that precedes horror.”
That is it, exactly. Much of this book is quiet and still, but every page seems to precede horror. And I loved it.
Thank you Counterpoint Press for the early copy. This releases March 8th!
March 28, 2022
Grotesque scenes of attempted rape and successful necrophilia really put me off. Telltale signs of a novice writer is when characters are described as “winking” at other characters in unlikely situations multiple times during a novel. The book contained no likable characters and the non-ending was annoying.
March 18, 2022
If I could give this a zero star rating I would. I have no idea what happened in this book.
August 4, 2025
How much brokenness can a man carry before society decides he’s a killer?
Marooned on a decaying houseboat along the shadowed banks of the Mississippi, Rigby Sellers is no ordinary protagonist—he’s a ghost in plain sight, a man warped by isolation and scorned by the world around him. Misunderstood, branded strange, and silently exiled by a town that fears what it doesn’t understand, Rigby becomes the easy target when a young boy vanishes without a trace.
What follows is not a hunt for truth, but a descent into the heart of prejudice, paranoia, and rural decay. The novel pulls back the curtain on the quiet brutality of small-town life—where mental illness festers in silence, and morality bends with every storm that rolls through the cornfields. The prose is haunting and hypnotic, each line dripping with poetry and unease, drawing you into a world as lyrical as it is unforgiving.
Despite its deliberate pace and experimental punctuation, the story's slow burn is a smoldering path into darkness. As the tension coils and the line between victim and villain begins to fray, one chilling question lingers in the reader’s mind like fog on the river.
The book was weird to say the least & i was confused at the ending.
Marooned on a decaying houseboat along the shadowed banks of the Mississippi, Rigby Sellers is no ordinary protagonist—he’s a ghost in plain sight, a man warped by isolation and scorned by the world around him. Misunderstood, branded strange, and silently exiled by a town that fears what it doesn’t understand, Rigby becomes the easy target when a young boy vanishes without a trace.
What follows is not a hunt for truth, but a descent into the heart of prejudice, paranoia, and rural decay. The novel pulls back the curtain on the quiet brutality of small-town life—where mental illness festers in silence, and morality bends with every storm that rolls through the cornfields. The prose is haunting and hypnotic, each line dripping with poetry and unease, drawing you into a world as lyrical as it is unforgiving.
Despite its deliberate pace and experimental punctuation, the story's slow burn is a smoldering path into darkness. As the tension coils and the line between victim and villain begins to fray, one chilling question lingers in the reader’s mind like fog on the river.
The book was weird to say the least & i was confused at the ending.
January 2, 2023
THE HOUSEBOAT
Dana Bahr
This is certainly one of the most stylish and atmospheric novels I have read. Gloomy with rain it always feels like dusk, sketchily drawn characters with flawed and broken pasts only add to the melancholy I felt as I read. The time period of the early 60s lends itself to the allowance of the necessary flaws of these characters as they add to the overall atmosphere of the drudgery of life and poorly made choices.
Fading back and forth between the social outcast and dangerous Rigby Sellers, the town's Sheriff Amos Fielding, and Regional Marshall Edward Ness the present plot is exposed through glimpses of each major player's past life and dealing with the current murder of a boy.
Rigby is a social outcast who lives on a dilapidated houseboat moored on the Mississippi River. This is the creepiest place I think I have ever read about and his only companions are stolen manikins that he talks to, fights with, and loves. Town sheriff Amos Fielding has only his wife who he loves and the fleeting memories of five children who were never born, he has thrown himself into protecting the community. Detective Edward Ness is a man who drowns his memories of his murdered wife and son who visit him often in his dreams. Ness is such a broken character, but certainly one you can identify with and understand his sorrow.
I don't think I will forget this one soon.
5 stars
Happy Reading!
Dana Bahr
This is certainly one of the most stylish and atmospheric novels I have read. Gloomy with rain it always feels like dusk, sketchily drawn characters with flawed and broken pasts only add to the melancholy I felt as I read. The time period of the early 60s lends itself to the allowance of the necessary flaws of these characters as they add to the overall atmosphere of the drudgery of life and poorly made choices.
Fading back and forth between the social outcast and dangerous Rigby Sellers, the town's Sheriff Amos Fielding, and Regional Marshall Edward Ness the present plot is exposed through glimpses of each major player's past life and dealing with the current murder of a boy.
Rigby is a social outcast who lives on a dilapidated houseboat moored on the Mississippi River. This is the creepiest place I think I have ever read about and his only companions are stolen manikins that he talks to, fights with, and loves. Town sheriff Amos Fielding has only his wife who he loves and the fleeting memories of five children who were never born, he has thrown himself into protecting the community. Detective Edward Ness is a man who drowns his memories of his murdered wife and son who visit him often in his dreams. Ness is such a broken character, but certainly one you can identify with and understand his sorrow.
I don't think I will forget this one soon.
5 stars
Happy Reading!
May 16, 2022
A rather dark story of small town life along the Mississippi in the 1960s with a thoroughly enjoyable narrator and mostly believable law enforcement characters.
March 12, 2022
Dark, disturbing, dreary, depressing and a non ending left this reader wondering what the heck by the end of the book! This was definitely a story I did not enjoy! Thank you to Counterpoint and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.
March 25, 2022
After a week, I've decided 4 stars, not 5.
This is short, however, not a quick read.
Not for everyone. This is dark. If it were a movie, I would see it twice, not everything is caught the first time.
This is short, however, not a quick read.
Not for everyone. This is dark. If it were a movie, I would see it twice, not everything is caught the first time.
February 1, 2023
I found this book pretty awful for a number of reasons.
First, it is billed as (and yeah of course it is) a crime novel, and on that front it is a complete failure. A crime novel should finish giving you some understanding of who did what, how they did it, and have some resolution. It doesn't even mean you have to lock up the bad guy, sometimes in a crime novel the bad guy gets away. Sometimes a good guy gets put away.
In the Houseboat, we conclude with basically no resolution.
Second, we have a couple of protagonists. A good guy and a bad buy. The good guy is a brooding lawman who is in a broken place because of the death of his family seven years back. As the book goes on, this guy, Ness, doesn't give us any more insight into his mind than that, he doesn't reveal, he doesn't grow, and he doesn't really seem to do an crime solving. What does he do? He drinks a lot and doesn't talk, because he's a moody broken man. This is not original writing.
Bahr also has some annoying affectations, such as using no additional punctuation for character dialog. Quotes are just dropped in a paragraph and usually the context makes it clear, but now always. It makes the reading experience weird. You are not Cormack MCarthy, Dane.
Dane also has a made up word that he drops in almost every place a character says "you", instead they say yeh, which is a non-word. He seems to use it for "yes" sometimes as well.
When this book ends, you'll be looking to turn the page and read a new chapter because WTF? I think he just got tired of writing and said, well, okay we will quit here.
The bad guy is super creepy and I guess that is a plus, it's a crime novel we want our antagonists to be bad, but he really might as well be a low-functioning robot for all we see into his mind and his behavior.
Don't buy this book, get it from the library. If you aren't digging it after 15 minutes, go ahead and return it, it is not going to get any better.
First, it is billed as (and yeah of course it is) a crime novel, and on that front it is a complete failure. A crime novel should finish giving you some understanding of who did what, how they did it, and have some resolution. It doesn't even mean you have to lock up the bad guy, sometimes in a crime novel the bad guy gets away. Sometimes a good guy gets put away.
In the Houseboat, we conclude with basically no resolution.
Second, we have a couple of protagonists. A good guy and a bad buy. The good guy is a brooding lawman who is in a broken place because of the death of his family seven years back. As the book goes on, this guy, Ness, doesn't give us any more insight into his mind than that, he doesn't reveal, he doesn't grow, and he doesn't really seem to do an crime solving. What does he do? He drinks a lot and doesn't talk, because he's a moody broken man. This is not original writing.
Bahr also has some annoying affectations, such as using no additional punctuation for character dialog. Quotes are just dropped in a paragraph and usually the context makes it clear, but now always. It makes the reading experience weird. You are not Cormack MCarthy, Dane.
Dane also has a made up word that he drops in almost every place a character says "you", instead they say yeh, which is a non-word. He seems to use it for "yes" sometimes as well.
When this book ends, you'll be looking to turn the page and read a new chapter because WTF? I think he just got tired of writing and said, well, okay we will quit here.
The bad guy is super creepy and I guess that is a plus, it's a crime novel we want our antagonists to be bad, but he really might as well be a low-functioning robot for all we see into his mind and his behavior.
Don't buy this book, get it from the library. If you aren't digging it after 15 minutes, go ahead and return it, it is not going to get any better.
September 12, 2021
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A lyrical, moody crime novel—there’s no mystery and just a smidgen of suspense—set in small-town Oscar, Iowa in 1960, a town “as plain as a white wall.” When a young couple, spending the night on the banks of the Mississippi River, are attacked—and the young man is murdered—local sheriff Amos Fielding knows he needs help, so he calls for regional backup. He’s rewarded with Edward Ness from Minnesota, a stylish detective who hasn’t put down the bottle since his wife and young son were murdered seven years earlier. We follow Ness as he discovers and flirts his way through Oscar. But soon enough the narrative turns to Rigby Sellers, a terrifying, angry recluse—with coke-bottle glasses and a “jutting brow and a bent nose, a patchy beard and an incomplete set of long jaundiced teeth”—who lives on a decrepit houseboat moored on the river. Still not convinced of Sellers’s creepiness? His lovers are mannequins that he dresses and paints for their date nights. Days go by without a confirmed suspect but with plenty of rain, and a long-standing drought gives way to a swollen Mississippi that rips through the town, upending it. When more bodies are found, the townspeople are, literally, up in arms, and Sellers is directly in their cross-hairs. Hard to put down and even harder to forget, The Houseboat is a poignant rendering of a place and time.—Brian Kenney
A lyrical, moody crime novel—there’s no mystery and just a smidgen of suspense—set in small-town Oscar, Iowa in 1960, a town “as plain as a white wall.” When a young couple, spending the night on the banks of the Mississippi River, are attacked—and the young man is murdered—local sheriff Amos Fielding knows he needs help, so he calls for regional backup. He’s rewarded with Edward Ness from Minnesota, a stylish detective who hasn’t put down the bottle since his wife and young son were murdered seven years earlier. We follow Ness as he discovers and flirts his way through Oscar. But soon enough the narrative turns to Rigby Sellers, a terrifying, angry recluse—with coke-bottle glasses and a “jutting brow and a bent nose, a patchy beard and an incomplete set of long jaundiced teeth”—who lives on a decrepit houseboat moored on the river. Still not convinced of Sellers’s creepiness? His lovers are mannequins that he dresses and paints for their date nights. Days go by without a confirmed suspect but with plenty of rain, and a long-standing drought gives way to a swollen Mississippi that rips through the town, upending it. When more bodies are found, the townspeople are, literally, up in arms, and Sellers is directly in their cross-hairs. Hard to put down and even harder to forget, The Houseboat is a poignant rendering of a place and time.—Brian Kenney
March 29, 2022
I’m honestly not sure what the point of this book was. The characters weren’t well developed, the storyline was disjointed (although it was the start of something that could’ve been good) and the ending felt incomplete. I only finished because it was so short. I’ll give it a 1.5 instead of a 1 because I enjoyed the narrator for the audiobook.
March 25, 2022
I loved this book. Finished in one day. I look forward to more books by Dane Bahr.
August 25, 2023
This was a quick read but not necessarily a satisfying one. I picked it up because it was on the Minnesota fiction shelf at the library. Turns out the author was born in MN and a lead character came from Minneapolis, but the action took place in a River town in Iowa. It was bleak and atmospheric, but the mystery, thriller aspects were lacking. The suspect in the murders was a down and out loser with a tragic backstory and disgusting habits…not much uplifting in the story. I’d kind of like to take back the time I spent reading this book. The writer had some skills, but I found myself analyzing his words like an English teacher.
February 27, 2022
2/27/2022 Full review tk at CriminalElement.com.
March 17, 2022
I picked this up on a whim at my local library. It tells the story of an abandoned child who has grown up to be a deeply troubled man and of the investigators sent to solve a local murder, and carrying their own haunted pasts. The writing is well done but some parts of the story are not as detailed as they could be. All in all, it is an interesting book and will keep you turning the pages to see what happens.
May 25, 2022
A very well written kinda crime novel that provides some good spooky moments and at least three fingers of backwoods drama, replete with regional dialects. This book very much reminded me of the wonderful first season of the HBO show, True Detective. I look forward to reading more from the author. This is a tight quick tension filled read.
May 9, 2022
Great story along with vivid descriptions.
April 21, 2022
Nope!
What in the world did I just read/listen to?! First of all- do NOT listen to this through the Alexa app- it is awful and they butcher the language. Secondly, what kind of ending is that? What happened to Ness? No type of justice? I feel like I just wasted my time with this book.
What in the world did I just read/listen to?! First of all- do NOT listen to this through the Alexa app- it is awful and they butcher the language. Secondly, what kind of ending is that? What happened to Ness? No type of justice? I feel like I just wasted my time with this book.
January 20, 2022
Thank you Netgalley and Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press, for the arc of this book. While the description sounded great, this book was not for me. I liked reading about Ness, but reading about Rigby was just too painful for me. It was just so depressing for me.
March 17, 2022
I feel like the author put stuff in for 'shock value' but I feel like it was just gross. Nothing honestly made sense to me and the end was not only left open but brought new to the table...just not a goodread for me sorry...
April 12, 2022
This was an interesting read. To say that Rigby Sellers is creepy is a major understatement. Detective Ness from Minneapolis who has his own dark despair is dead set on finding and capturing Rigby.
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