While I love Thrillers and murder stories, when stories are told from the murderer's perspective, it can be either hit or miss for me. This one was a miss. It actually hurt my stomach.

While I did feel sympathy for the life of this character, I truly was disgusted by the warped sexual depravity that seemed to go on and on and get worse and worse.

I don't know what I need to do now but i need a big pallet cleanser!

This one is dark and dingy folks, enter at your own risk!

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!

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 sayin 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.

A spare novel of murder in a small Iowa town in 1960. Edward Ness, mourning the murder of his wife and son by drinking, straightens up enough to investigate what happened to a young man murdered on a camp ground,. Did the local creep- Rigby Sellers- do it? Sellers lives on a houseboat, has very off habits, and a dreadful backstory, Bahr uses dialect to enhance the atmospherics of a what's a pretty bleak plot and miserable characters. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. An interesting read.

I really wanted to like this book and the premise was so interesting, but the execution just ended up disappointing me. The characters were flat, the way women were treated was bad, and the plot just didn’t keep me interested at all.

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.

Well written and kept me invested in the intricate story. Great cast of characters.
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

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.

When a brutal murder is discovered in small town Iowa, the local authorities call in federal agent Edward Ness to help solve the crime. Set in 1960, THE HOUSEBOAT is a throwback noir that’ll leave you feeling as though you just escaped from the muddy sloughs along the Mississippi River where the novel is set. Ness arrives on scene to find a community certain the guilty party is a well-known troublemaker named Rigby Sellers, who lives in the floating trash heap he calls a home, kept company by a couple of stolen mannequins he likes to dress up. But Ness carries his own scars that make him the right man for the case, not only from the line of duty, but also from his personal life.

There was a lot I enjoyed about this book. Bahr’s writing is vivid and often uncomfortable in the way he describes the monstrosities at play in the story, and he crafts some powerful scenes. But I struggled with the way the story was pieced together overall, and he liked to lean on sentences with an implied subject that regularly pulled me out of the story (“A little after noon he heard voices. Stood suddenly with his hand cupped to his ear.”). Still, I found it an absorbing read that kept me hooked to the end, one I did not see coming.

Wow, Bahr's novel, The Houseboat is so awesome. The prose is striking and breathtaking. Conjures up scenes from True Detective or if McCarthy had written a detective mystery. It's eerie, dark, and unsettling and when it was over, it did what great fiction does...stuck around with me long after I read the final page.

Interesting but not really my cup of tea. Well written I just personally couldn’t get into the story. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book. I was so intrigued by the description of this book, but it just wasn’t for me. I had a difficult time getting engaged in the story, and it became a DNF for me at about 20% into the story.

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.

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.

Like Cormac McCarthy Dane Bahr eschews parentheses around dialogue. Also like McCarthy, he's written a dark, blood-soaked, gem of a novel with a beating heart to go along with the thrills. Rigby Sellers is the local recluse in the woods, weird, delusional, probably violent. His only companions are the female manikins with smooth holes cut where their mouths should be (Sure, let your imagination settle on that thought for a bit). So when a local girl from town comes screaming naked from the woods claiming someone shot and killed her boyfriend, you can imagine that Sellers is immediately the prime suspect. However, as much as it seems a slam dunk, Sheriff Amos Fielding calls the marshals for reinforcement. They send Detective Ed Ness, a gifted investigator with a dark past tinged by personal tragedy. This book is populated with characters that come to life, poetic writing, and that beating heart of humanity I referred to earlier in the review. Very much recommended!