Leave the Girls Behind

Jacqueline Bublitz

Leave the Girls Behind
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Allen & Unwin
Country
Australia
Published
29 October 2024
Pages
384
ISBN
9781760879365

Leave the Girls Behind

Jacqueline Bublitz

You can run from your past, but not from the girls left behind.

Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann Baker's childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced Oswald had other victims. But no one has ever believed her.

After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory, Ruth is bartending when she hears that another young girl has gone missing from her home town. With Oswald now deceased, she begins to suspect he had an accomplice. A partner in crime who is still active today.

Crossing the globe from New York to New Zealand, Ruth unlocks parts of herself that she hasn't dared to revisit, bringing her perilously close to three different women. The deeper she delves, the more she can't shake the feeling that one of them knows the truth. About her childhood friend. About the missing girl. And, perhaps most dangerously of all, about Ruth herself ...

The acclaimed author of the 'tour de force' (The New York Times Book Review) Before You Knew My Name returns with another taut suspense thriller, overlaid with a moving exploration of the ways in which violent crime ricochets through the lives of those left behind.

Review

The author of the award-winning debut Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz’s newest novel challenges the glamourisation, by the media and in pop culture, of male serial killers and redirects our attention to the lives of the girls and women taken by travesty.

Ruth is haunted by the disappearance and murder of her best friend, Beth, when they were kids living in Hoben, Connecticut. Having moved away to New York as an adult, the only reminder of her past is Beth’s ghost, who she talks to, as well as the ghosts of other young girls who have been kidnapped and killed. Although their music teacher was arrested the same day Beth’s body was found, Ruth has always had her suspicions about what really happened that dreadful day. So, when another young girl, Coco, is also kidnapped in Ruth’s hometown years later, Ruth sees it as her responsibility to uncover the truth herself.

Ruth is as dedicated and resourceful as a detective can be, contacting online chatrooms of amateur detectives hoping to solve unsolved cases, posing as a fake true-crime podcaster, and even travelling across the world for answers. We follow Ruth as she connects the dots with other women whose lives have been uprooted by the music teacher, and whose tragic pasts have left them vulnerable to the whims of more evil men. Within an enthralling murder mystery, Bublitz shines a light on the reality of male violence against women and the ripple effects it leaves behind. Bublitz skilfully makes clear that, much as Ruth often strays from her search for Coco to attempts to answer the questions of her own past, all too often in real life the gore and mystery behind a killer’s actions steal the focus from the people left behind, who must survive without their loved ones, and from the women whose lives are taken every day.

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