Leave the Girls Behind

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.