Don’t Forget the Girl

First, there were three. Now only two women are left, estranged but still desperate to know what happened to their college friend Abby, who disappeared years ago. They might never know, as serial killer Jon Allan Blue, who killed other young women in the area around the same time, is about to be put to death. The two remaining friends can’t be more different. Bree is a college professor who’s having an affair with an underage student, which sets in relief the unending turmoil caused by Abby’s death. Chelsea is an Episcopal priest whose collar and steadfast demeanor hide an inner longing to break out of her marriage to a man who “looks like a photo of himself that [has] been left too long in the sun.” The two must interact again when a true-crime podcast covers Blue’s killings. The producer tries to convince Bree and Chelsea that their friend’s case deserves to be investigated, but with the show breathlessly feeding the media frenzy with comments like, “Friends don’t let friends get murdered” and Blue himself relishing the spotlight, participation seems counterproductive, not to mention tacky. While Abby’s fate is debated, we flash back to the three friend’s lives in the run up to her disappearance. This and the carefully posed exposé of podcast politics will leave readers looking differently at the spectacle that is the true-crime world, especially when it comes to women victims.