Jacqueline Bublitz burst onto the crime scene with her multi-award winning debut Before You Knew My Name. That book was set in New York and centred around the murder of a young woman. Her follow up, Leave the Girls Behind, treads similar territory and explores similar themes but from a different angle.
Ruth-Ann Baker was taken to New York from a small Connecticut town when she was seven after the murder of another young girl, Beth Lovely, by a man called Ethan Oswald. Leave The Girls Behind opens nineteen years later, Beth’s killer has died in jail, but Ruth-Ann is still fixated on the event. More than that, Ruth-Ann has also discovered three other earlier, unsolved disappearances of young girls that she thinks may be connected to Oswald. She is spurred on in those investigations by the ghosts of Beth and the other girls (whether those apparitions are real or not is up for debate, they are certainly real to Ruth). When a young girl goes missing in similar circumstances from her old hometown, Ruth starts to spiral. She goes back to chasing links to the four disappearances and in doing so locates three very different women who were in some way connected to Oswald. All three, as it turned out, were married to other killers. Under the cover of ‘making a podcast’ about women whose partners are killers, Ruth flies around the world to try and find out what those women know.
Leave the Girls Behind is a strange novel anchored by a very unreliable protagonist. The twists and turns that come through the book are not often about the case of the missing girl or even the historical crimes. They are mainly Ruth-Ann learning more about herself and what drives her. Ruth-Ann is not a great investigator, and while she thinks she is being clever, is often more manipulated than the people she is trying to investigate.
There is plenty of interesting thematic work in Leave the Girls Behind. Bublitz starts with a question about disappearances not investigated because the victim is not middle class or white enough. She also explores the way in which charismatic men manipulate women, particularly younger women and the impact that this can have on them throughout their lives. She wonders about whether killing, particularly serial killing, is a trait that can be taught or learnt. And through Ruth-Ann particularly she explores the ongoing consequences of trauma.
Leave the Girls Behind is never quite sure what sort of book it wants to be. The main character spends most of the novel making poor choices and the way the narrative plays out sometimes defies logic and credibility. But there are hints of something larger going on that should keep readers hooked. And Bublitz has things plenty of things to say – about the impact of crime and trauma, about coming to terms with your past, and about predators, their enablers and their victims – which adds a little to the narrative confusion but makes Leaves The Girls Behind much more than just a simple crime novel.
Leave the Girls Behind by Jacqueline Bublitz
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