The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Foley, Lucy. The Paris Apartment. William Morrow, February 22, 2022. Kindle.

In the murder mystery The Paris Apartment, author Lucy Foley incorporates a missing journalist, blackmail notes, a murder, family secrets, and a suspicious cast of characters to leave her readers guessing till the end who did what. Jess Hadley arrives at her brother’s new apartment in Paris to find Ben is not there to meet her as he promised. As Jess questions the other people who live in Ben’s apartment building, she becomes more convinced that something bad has happened to Ben. She thinks that one of them is responsible.

Foley writes her novel from the first-person point of view. The cast of characters includes Jess, who is trying to determine what happened to her brother; the concierge, who watches the family and knows everything; Sophie, who is trying to hide from her past and protect her daughter; Nick, who desperately wants to be a good guy who is loved by his father; and Mimi, a troubled young woman who falls in love with Ben. These characters piece together their story as they narrate both present and past events.

After Jess arrives at her brother’s apartment to find he is not there like he promised he would be, she begins asking other residents if they have seen him. They raise Jess’s suspicions by either lying about their relationship with Ben or refusing to answer Jess’s questions. It is only when Jess sees a picture when snooping in the office of Jacques Meunier, a wine broker and Sophie’s husband, that she realizes the people who live in the building are members of a family.

Jess connects with a newspaper editor with whom Ben worked and discovers that Jacques runs an exclusive sex club where the main product is underage girls from other countries. These girls are lured to the club with the promise that they will have careers as dancers. Jacques’s paperwork shows that he is selling wine, but the customers are paying for sex.

Foley pieces together a story about Mimi sneaking into Ben’s apartment. She was intending to have sex with him because she believed he was in love with her. While she was waiting for Ben to return home, she read Ben's in-progress article. In it, he detailed from where her family’s money came, a fact of which Mimi was unaware. Ben wrote that Mimi was not Sophie and Jacques’s biological daughter. Jacques gave her to Sophie after a girl who worked at the club became pregnant and then died in childbirth. Mimi is devastated by this information. She tells Nick, her brother, what she found.

As a result, Nick calls his father home to warn him about what Ben is doing. When Jacques learns that Ben is planning to ruin his reputation by exposing his exploitation of young women, he confronts Ben. Jacques hits Ben repeatedly with a wine bottle, intending to kill him. Mimi sees what is happening from her room. Even though she is angry with Ben for betraying her, she still loves him. She kills her father by stabbing him with a knife.

Sophie, who does not want her daughter to get into trouble, wraps her husband’s body and takes Ben, who is still alive, to the attic. Nick helps Sophie bury the body. He believes that it was Ben who has been killed. When Jess returns to the building after her visit with Theo to the club, Nick confronts her. She escapes from him by running to the attic where she finds Ben. Jess and Theo come to an agreement with Sophie. Ben will release his article, but he will not mention Sophie, Mimi, or Nick in it as long as Sophie agrees to pay the dancers from her husband’s club so they can start new lives elsewhere.