Leave the Girls Behind (Jacqueline Bublitz, A&U)

Ruth-Ann Baker, affectionately known as ‘Ruthie’ to those around her, never takes the same route home, secures her apartment with three internal chain locks and can recite murder victim statistics off the top of her head. In Jacqueline Bublitz’s Leave the Girls Behind, Ruthie harbours a secret: she’s often visited by the ghost of her childhood best friend, Beth, who was abducted and murdered in their hometown of Hoben, Connecticut, when they were seven years old. When another child goes missing in the town Ruthie left behind, she’s spurred into action, revisiting old memories and piecing together clues to try to establish a pattern. Leave the Girls Behind steps into the framework of a crime mystery novel without being a classic whodunnit. Bublitz (Before You Knew My Name) leans on established tropes of copycat killers, suspected accomplices and online citizen detective forums to explore the hierarchy of victimhood, the ethics of the burgeoning true crime genre, the phenomenon of collective grief, and the legacy of trauma and complicity. There are perpetrators of violence and misogyny, and there are the people who enable them, whether explicitly or implicitly. A page-turner with unexpected twists right up to the end, Leave the Girls Behind will appeal to readers who enjoyed Lucy Treloar’s Days of Innocence and Wonder, Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town and Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Sonia Nair is a Melbourne-based writer and critic. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Friday Unlocked reviews Reviews