The Alice Network

by Kate Quinn

First published 2017

Amazon

4.5(95,502)

In 1947, pregnant American student Charlie St Clair escapes her family's plans in order to search France for a cousin who disappeared during the Second World War. Her only lead brings her to Eve Gardiner, a damaged former intelligence agent who initially refuses to revisit the past.

Eve's account returns to 1915, when she entered German-occupied France and joined a women-led spy network. The two timelines converge around betrayal, wartime collaboration and the unresolved consequences carried by people whom official peace has not restored.

Eve’s wartime experience draws on the real intelligence network organised around Louise de Bettignies in German-occupied northern France. Female agents carried reports, mapped troop movements and crossed checkpoints at extraordinary risk, yet many returned from the war with little public recognition. The 1947 storyline shows how espionage survives in memory long after governments have declared peace and moved on.