Pip Drysdale’s The Paris Affair Pip Drysdale is an actor, Musician and writer. She’s the author of The Sunday Girl, and The Strangers We Know which is currently in production for a TV adaptation. Her latest is The Paris Affair. Harper Brown is in Paris to fulfil her dreams. She’s landed a job as an arts writer for an online publisher covering all the hippest corners of the city of lights. Sure her colleagues refuse to take her seriously, her ex keeps sliding into her DMs to remind her he’s doing great and now the hottest new artist in Paris is hot for her, but Harper has sworn off love. Harper is jaded and she’s got reason. Her ex is a grade 1 gaslighter who won’t let go even after taking her time and money and dumping her just as his band hits the big time (he was fucking the bass player). Harper segues her anger into her writing garnering an online following for her blog ‘How to not get murdered’. And that’s what makes The Paris Affair so compelling. Harper is savvy not just to the typical bastardry of men behaving badly, she tacitly acknowledges the ways seemingly innocuous male behaviour can become dangerous. The Paris Affair does lots of things you’ve seen before in thrillers. There’s a dead woman and an indifferent police force. Another body turns up and this time Harper knows the victim. Yes there is likely an unknown killer stalking the streets of the city of love preying on young women. As mystery/thriller tropes these are not original but here’s where The Paris Affair says ‘hold my bookmark’ and takes the reader down a different cobbled street. Through Harper, Drysdale explores the dangers and benefits of our perpetually online and broadcast world. Harper’s column ‘How to not get murdered’ is a hyper reality version of the sort of situational awareness that women must live with to survive in a world where victims are more likely to be asked what they were wearing than if they are alright. The Paris Affair shows us how in the hands of good guys and bad social media can be weaponized and will definitely have you checking whether your location services are active or not. Pip Drysdale seems to asking the reader to look at their own desire to be seen through a multitude of social platforms and then start to question who is doing the watching. The Paris Affair is an eminently readable novel. I didn’t hate being able to fly through the streets of Montmartre (even if vicariously) while we all site ourselves never too far from home. The writing is pacy and Harper is cynically endearing. You could absolutely take yourself away for a few hours and read The Paris Affair for the escape of it all, but I’d suggest there’s a lot more going on here - dudebros and would-be nice guys need not apply.