LEAVE THE GIRLS BEHIND

A young woman traumatized by a childhood friend’s murder investigates a similar crime 19 years later.

The true crime–loving amateur detective is everywhere in fiction these days, but New Zealand–born writer Bublitz brings a welcome twist to her version. As in her last novel, Before You Knew My Name (2022), she pushes the boundaries of the genre by adding a supernatural element and a sharp feminist sensibility to this thriller about New York City bartender Ruth-Ann Baker. A college dropout in her mid 20s, Ruth has good reason to be obsessed with true-crime stories: She’s still suffering psychological trauma from the abduction and murder of her best friend, Beth Lovely, when they were both children. Local teacher Ethan Oswald was convicted of the crime and died in prison, but when Ruth learns another girl has vanished from her Connecticut hometown all these years later, she wonders if there could be a connection. Did Oswald have a helper still out there? She sounds out her theories with an unusual cohort: Beth’s ghost and the ghosts of other murdered girls. But Ruth is not the most reliable of narrators, and Bublitz keeps the reader guessing about whether or not these ghostly conversations are all in Ruth’s head. As Ruth embarks on an investigation that will take her around the world and into the lives of three different women with connections to Oswald, she reveals more about her own troubled past. With empathy and insight, Bublitz examines the scars violence leaves on its victims and refutes the idea that some deaths are more tragic than others.

An empathetic psychological thriller with a supernatural twist.