This is my second review of a Foley novel, having discussed her Reese Witherspoon-selected novel The Guest List (The Guest List, by Lucy Foley — Marguerite Reads). Foley doesn’t exactly have a formula, rather a sub-genre. Pick a beautiful, rich setting, as the place becomes a character. Select a range of attractive, interesting characters, each with secrets, and all somehow in relation, however loosely. Each has a personal stake in the action, in what becomes revealed, and must remain secret. Pick a character who exerts control over most of your cast, building deep resentments— he is strong, but control can slip under the right circumstances. The plot twist in this novel is the entrance of our somewhat bumbling, street-savvy primary narrator, who stumbles into a bad situation, asking too many questions, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong— yet she has much at stake too, so she just won’t go away.

Jess and Ben only really have each other in life. Siblings whose father has deserted the family, whose mother commits suicide, and the kids wind up in foster care in London. Ben is lucky— he is adopted by a wealthy family and can start a new life afresh with opportunities. Jess survives a series of terrible foster families until she can be independent, but remains mired in bar tending jobs, going nowhere. Her one salvation is her brother, an inconsistent but continuing thread in her life, helping her out when circumstances are most dire, but distancing himself, so as not to sully the life he is trying to create for himself.

Ben is living in a posh apartment in Paris, trying to make it as a journalist, to rise above restaurant reviews into the risky, dangerous realm of investigative reporting. Jess needs to escape her last bar tending job, quickly arranges with Ben to crash at his apartment for a while— but he is not there. He had texted her that he would be expecting her, giving her the address, but it looks like he just stepped out. Jess snoops around, meets the other residents of the building, who all seem a bit off, not quite what they appear to be. She starts finding small clues that seem not quite right, as the hours, then days tick by with no Ben. Jess becomes increasingly agitated, urgent in her quest to find her brother, as the facts she collects point to a dark mystery, dangerous for them both.

Told from each character’s point of view in alternating chapters, the novel starts slow but picks up the pace about a third of the way in, becoming breakneck to the end. Foley manages to keep the reader guessing most of the way, until you realize what has happened, then wonder how it can possibly resolve. Foley has done a great job of creating good characters, especially Jess and Ben, likeable, believable, that you will care about. A fun, suspenseful mystery. Recommended.