Summary of The Alice Network - A Comprehensive Summary
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn tells the story of unlikely friends and their quest for revenge on a brutal man. Evelyn “Eve” Gardiner left her job as a spy in WWI to kill René, a warfare profiteer whom she blamed for the loss of the life of her best friend. Eve believed she would never get the revenge she desired when she was told René was dead. Many years later, Charlotte “Charlie” St. Clair came to Eve looking for her cousin, Rose, who had become linked with René and supposedly died during WWII. Figuring out that her enemy was alive after all, Eve set out to find and kill him. At the same time, Eve and Charlie found similarities in their lives and bonded as friends.
Charlie’s mother had brought Charlie from their home in New York City to England for an abortion. Charlie manipulated their trip plans so that she could go to Eve, a woman whose name she had found in the search for her cousin, Rose. Charlie believed her cousin was still alive and was hoping that Eve could help find her. Eve agreed to assist Charlie but had her ulterior motive. René, the man for whom Rose had worked at one point, was Eve’s enemy. She had made it her life’s work to hunt René down and kill him.
In WWI, Eve had wanted to take part in the war; however, she was unable to do so not only because she was a woman but also because she had a stammer. She was recruited as a spy and worked in René’s restaurant, Le Lethe, in German-occupied Lille. Because Eve could speak German, she should snoop on the German officials René catered to in his restaurant. Even though Eve had hoped that René would not notice her, he requested she become his mistress. Eve agreed because she believed she might be fired from her job and lose her task as a spy if she did not.
After Eve and Lili were arrested while looking to get through a German checkpoint on a one-person safe passage pass, René closed his restaurant to take care of Eve. He suspected she became a spy and wanted to find out for sure. At some point in the night, René smashed all of Eve’s knuckles as he questioned her about the lady with whom she had been arrested. The following day René turned Eve over to the Germans. He claimed that she had informed him of everything about Lili while she was under the influence of a dose of opium that he gave her. Eve blamed herself for betraying her friend, a betrayal that brought about Lili, Eve, and Violette, any other spy, being sentenced to jail. Lili died in prison. Eve blamed herself for Lili’s death.
In the meantime, Charlie found out that her cousin, Rose, had died in a bloodbath within the village of Oradour-Sur-Glane. Eve discovered through her research that René had turned Rose in as a member of the resistance, which meant that he was responsible for Rose’s death. Charlie agreed to assist Eve to find René, which resulted in Eve killing René and then turning the gun on herself. Charlie convinced Eve to live by telling her that she had found out that René had lied to Eve. Eve had never given René any facts about Lili or the Alice Network, a collection of women spies that Lili oversaw. The data instead came from an old cellmate of Lili’s.
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