Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.
Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women—one of whom might just hold the key to what happened to the missing girl. And her childhood friend, all those years ago.
Kiwi author Jacqueline Bublitz, who’s split her life between Taranaki in New Zealand and Melbourne in Australia, garnered wide acclaim for her trope-busting debut, Before You Knew My Name, a feminist literary thriller that explored the all-too-typical ‘murdered women found in a NYC park’ story we’ve often seen, especially on TV dramas, from a fresh perspective.
That of the victim herself, and the bystander who finds the body.
Critics and reader praise, sales, and awards flowed, including Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, and double-ups at the crime-loving Davitt Awards in Australia and Ngaio Marsh Awards in New Zealand. Also a shortlisting for the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel in the English language that year; Bublitz was the only female author, and only debut author, to make the shortlist. How do you follow that as a first-time effort?
Well, now Bublitz is back with another fascinating standalone that rakes over some similar ground – true crime obsession and the wider impact of misogynistic murders – while being its own story. In Leave the Girls Behind, New York bartender Ruth-Ann Baker is on high alert after a young girl goes missing from her hometown in Connecticut. Awful memories stir of Ruth-Ann’s best friend Beth being abducted and murdered by popular music teacher Ethan Oswald almost twenty years before. Ruth-Ann always felt Oswald had more victims, but Oswald died in prison, so he couldn’t have committed this new horror. But still, it stirs Ruth-Ann’s past trauma.
She always felt Oswald had many more victims, and perhaps an accomplice. The local police in Connecticut, along with counsellors and her parents, didn’t believe her. Especially when she told them she was certain of her beliefs because of Beth’s ghost, and the ghosts of other murdered girls who visited Ruth-Ann; looking for help, looking for justice. Could Oswald have had help? Is the current perp somehow linked to what happened many years ago? Or is it just geographic chance, compounded by voices in Ruth-Ann’s head?
Bublitz takes readers on an at-times bewildering ride into Ruth-Ann’s life, obsessions, and trauma, as well as across the globe as Ruth-Ann decides to take action and follows tenuous leads to New Zealand and Norway, looking for links to Oswald and her ghostly girls. But is our unreliable narrator trying to help a missing girl in the present, ones from the past, or herself?
Bublitz has conjured another fascinating tale that is likely to stick with readers long after the final page. A story about the messy ripples that are cast by violence, and fear. Ongoing trauma and how that manifests. Leave the Girls Behind is not the easiest read, though Bublitz writes well and the text flows smoothly even as the story is murky. Like Australia’s famed breakfast spread, Vegemite, it may divide readers, while leaving a strong aftertaste either way. An intriguing, impressive sophomore novel.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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