The best Thriller books set in Paris

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there.

The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has in this gripping psychological thriller. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.

The socialite – The nice guy – The alcoholic – The girl on the verge – The concierge

Everyone’s a neighbor. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her.

When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer.

The Missing Sister by Elle Marr

In Paris, her twin sister has vanished, leaving behind three chilling words: Trust no one.

Shayna Darby is finally coming to terms with her parents’ deaths when she’s delivered another blow. The body of her estranged twin sister, Angela―the possible victim of a serial killer―has been pulled from the Seine. Putting what’s left of her life on hold, Shayna heads to Paris. But while cleaning out Angela’s apartment, Shayna makes a startling discovery: a coded message meant for her alone…

Alive. Trust no one.

Taking the warning to heart, Shayna maintains the lie. She makes a positive ID on the remains and works to find out where―and why―her missing sister is hiding. Shayna retraces her sister’s footsteps, and they lead her down into Paris’s underbelly.

As she gets closer to the truth―and to the killer―Shayna’s own life may now be in the balance…

Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

From fine Bordeaux and freshly baked baguettes to the friendly chatter of the green market, postwar Paris is indulging its appetite for food, and life, once more, as Tabitha Knight, a young American woman, makes friends with chef-in-training Julia Child—and finds herself immersed in a murder most unsavory . . .

As Paris rediscovers its joie de vivre, Tabitha Knight, recently arrived from Detroit for an extended stay with her French grandfather, is on her own journey of discovery. Paris isn’t just the City of Light; it’s the city of history, romance, stunning architecture . . . and food. Thanks to her neighbor and friend Julia Child, another expat who’s fallen head over heels for Paris, Tabitha is learning how to cook for her Grandpère and her Oncle Rafe.

Between tutoring Americans in French, and sampling the results of Julia’s studies at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, Tabitha’s sojourn is thoroughly delightful. That is, until the cold December day they return to Julia’s building and learn that a body has been found in the cellar. Tabitha recognizes the victim from a party given by Julia’s sister, Dort, the night before. The murder weapon is recognizable too—a knife from Julia’s kitchen.

Tabitha is eager to help the investigation, but is shocked when Inspector Merveille reveals that a note, in Tabitha’s handwriting, was found in the dead woman’s pocket. Now, from the shadows of the Tour Eiffel, to the Childs’ tiny kitchen, to the grungy streets of Montmartre, Tabitha navigates the city, hoping to find the real killer before she or one of her friends ends up in prison . . . or worse.

The French Honeymoon by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau

The Paris Apartment meets A Simple Favor in an unputdownable thriller about a honeymoon gone horribly wrong.

Sometimes, Paris is a terrible idea.

This is not how she imagined it, any of it. Taylor Quinn arrives at her honeymoon suite in the City of Love alone, sans suitcase, but with wads of stolen cash. When she catches a glimpse of newlyweds Cassie and Olivier enjoying their happily ever, she can’t tear her eyes away. And Cassie makes their antics easy to follow as she reveals every detail of their picture-perfect trip on social media. Taylor’s obsession builds as she tracks their every move. This was the kind of life she was supposed to be living, this was the marriage she should have had, this was the honeymoon she dreamed of.

The illusion is shattered when she overhears a heated argument between Cassie and Olivier, which reveals that they’re not the lovestruck couple they pretend to be. But Cassie and Olivier have agendas of their own and Taylor can’t see the danger in getting in the middle of this until it’s too late. And now, no one will get out of Paris unscathed.

Angélique by Guillaume Musso

PARIS, CHRISTMAS 2021. After a heart attack, Mathias Taillefer wakes up in the hospital with a stranger at his bedside. The mysterious girl reveals herself to be Louise Collange, a volunteer who has come to play the cello for patients.

When she finds out that Mathias is a cop, she asks him to look into a very special case. Her mother, a former ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet, died last year after falling from her balcony, and Louise has a hunch she was pushed. Though hesitant at first, Mathias agrees to help her, sending them both headfirst into a deadly chain of events. And at the centre of it all, a woman named Angélique, whose angelic intentions may not be all they seem.

The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas

When blue chalk circles begin to appear on the pavement in neighborhoods around Paris, Commissaire Adamsberg is alone in thinking that they are far from amusing. As he studies each new circle and the increasingly bizarre objects they contain – empty beer cans, four trombones, a pigeon’s foot, a doll’s head – he senses the cruelty that lies within whoever is responsible. And when a circle is discovered with decidedly less banal contents – a woman with her throat slashed – Adamsberg knows that this is just the beginning.

Murder in the Marais by Cara Black

Meet Aimée Leduc, the smart, stylish Parisian private investigator, in her bestselling first investigation

Aimée Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.

Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne

Winner of the Prix Quai du Polar, Antoin Varenne is a rising star in the exciting new wave of French crime fiction. Hard-boiled Paris police lieutenant Richard Guérin thought he knew the depths of human tragedy and perversion during his years investigating suicide cases—not to mention his childhood, raised by his prostitute mother (who left him nothing but her foul-mouthed parrot).
 
But when a slew of cases that are way too bizarre to be straightforward suicides end up on his desk, Guérin begins to suspect that he is up against a nihilistic evil beyond anything he’s encountered before.
 
First, there is Alan Musgrave, an American man who bleeds himself to death on stage during a sick S&M show in an underground Paris nightclub. Another runs naked into traffic with arms outstretched and is splattered to pulp by a heavy truck. Yet another hurls himself from a museum balcony to death by impalement on a whale skeleton.
 
Guérin’s corrupt police colleagues ridicule his determination to find the connections between these horrifying deaths. Yet he presses on, plunging into the seamy sadomasochistic underbelly of the City of Lights that most never see.
 
Unexpected help comes from a friend of Musgrave’s, an eccentric and resourceful rich American named John Nichols who has recently arrived in Paris toting a bow and arrows. The bloody trail leads them to the upper reaches of both the Parisian police force and the American embassy, while Guérin begins to suspect that the ultimate answer may lie somewhere in Nichols’s past.
 
In Bed of Nails, Varenne does for Paris what James Ellroy did for vintage Los Angeles: He expertly throws a bright light on a fashionable city’s hideous hidden face.

Confessions: The Paris Mysteries by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

In this New York Times bestseller, brilliant detective Tandy Angel is meeting her lost love in Paris—but when he becomes more distant, she starts to question everything she knows. Is there anyone she can trust?

After investigating multiple homicides and her family’s decades-old skeletons in the closet, Tandy Angel is finally reunited with her lost love in Paris. But as he grows increasingly distant, she is confronted with disturbing questions about him, as well as what really happened to her long-dead sister. With no way to tell anymore who in her life she can trust, how will Tandy ever get to the bottom of the countless secrets her parents kept from her? 

James Patterson leads this brilliant teenage detective through Paris on a trail of lies years in the making, with shocking revelations around every corner.

The Stranger in the Seine by Guillaume Musso

From an international bestselling author: one foggy Paris night, a young woman is fished out of the Seine with no memory of who she is —but the quest to identify her leads to a woman who is already dead. On a winter night in Paris, a young woman is pulled naked out of the Seine. She has amnesia and bears no identifying marks apart from two peculiar tattoos. She is rushed to the infirmary of Paris police headquarters, but only a few hours later, she disappears.

DNA analysis reveals her identity. She is the famous pianist Milena Bergman. But that’s impossible, because Milena died in a plane crash more than a year ago. Raphael, Milena’s former fiancé desperate for answers, and Roxane, a cop hell-bent on proving herself after a recent fall from grace, spearhead the investigation. Their quest to uncover the truth quickly reveals secrets long buried, a web of impostors, and danger lurking in plain sight. Nevertheless, they are determined to get to the center of this mystery: How can a person be both dead and alive at the same time?

A Murder in Paris by Matthew Blake

Olivia Finn is a memory expert at Charing Cross Hospital in London. One night, she receives an urgent call from the police at the Hotel Lutetia on Paris’s famous Left Bank. Olivia’s French grandmother, Josephine Benoit, has appeared at the Lutetia in a distressed state claiming she once committed a murder in the hotel at the end of the Second World War.

Traveling to Paris, Olivia finds her grandmother confused. But Josephine insists it is a recovered memory from the past. More disturbingly, hotel records show that a woman did die in that room of the Lutetia in 1945. Could her story really be true?

As people start dying in the present day, Olivia is plunged into a race against time to uncover the truth about Josephine and what really happened all those years ago. Set among the glamorous streets of Paris, this addictive thriller asks: what if a memory could get you killed?

Déjà Dead by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

Things can get pretty dark in the City of Light. Claire Baskerville is a sixty-something American who finds herself alone in Paris when her husband is brutally murdered. Reeling from the onslaught of devastating secrets he left behind Claire is stunned to realize she no longer knows who to trust. She only knows she can’t move forward until she finds out the truth behind who killed her husband.In spite of a genetic brain anomaly that makes it impossible for her to remember faces –even ones she’d seen just moments before, and all alone in a foreign city, Claire doggedly collects the clues that will lead her to her husband’s killer.Unfortunately, the closer she gets to the truth, the more determined that killer is to make sure she never leaves Paris alive.This book is a clean read: no graphic violence, sex or strong languageGenre: women amateur sleuth