Before You Knew My Name is the debut of Melbourne author JACQUELINE BUBLITZ, a murder-mystery where the focus is on discovering the victim rather than finding the killer.

Good Reading chatted with Jacqueline about her twist on the crime genre, and how her time in New York inspired her.

The book is summed up with ‘This is not just another novel about a dead girl’. What does this mean to you?
I love a good ‘whodunnit’ but the so-called dead girl in crime fiction is often little more than a cipher – her body is the blank page that other characters get to write their stories on. My intention was always to give agency back to the victim, which is why Before You Knew My Name deliberately brings the focus back to her – who this girl was, and who she might be now. Having Alice narrate the story of her life and death felt like an interesting way to do that.

Before You Knew My Name was written in New York, where the book also takes place. What about New York captured you creatively?
Every day, you encounter people making their art, putting it out there, and even when I wasn’t writing, I felt immersed in this sort of bright, neon world of ideas, all these attempts to communicate and connect. That’s incredibly stimulating.

New York could inspire the characters, too. Any time I went exploring – parks, rooftop bars, tourist attractions, and yes, morgues – I would imagine Alice and Ruby there with me, taking it all in.

What can you tell us about Ruby, who finds Alice’s body in the Hudson River?
Ruby comes to New York to get away from a toxic relationship back in Melbourne. Finding Alice’s body brings a sense of purpose and direction to her life. She becomes something of an amateur sleuth as she sets out to find out who Alice was, and what happened to her. Through this quest, a whole new world of connection is opened up to Ruby, in ways she never imagined.

The media’s fascination with murdered/missing white women is a focus. What did you want to say with this aspect?
I wanted to address the notion of the ‘perfect’ victim. Alice is aware that she meets the criteria that seems to determine whether her murder is considered newsworthy, worthy of public sympathy and outrage: she is young, attractive, and white. She also knows that revelations from her past could quickly turn that into moral judgement. Alice understands that she is being held to an arbitrary standard of innocence which is something we see play out in the media too often.