Great imagery and generation of ambiance/mood. ( )

When you begin reading Innocence-- and I hope all of you will-- please do not skip the introduction written by Heda Margolius Kovály's son. These pages will show you that Kovály's own life was every bit as interesting as her book, and as each character's secrets are revealed, there is such an incredible ring of truth that it cannot be denied. Kovály was influenced by Raymond Chandler, but this little jewel of a mystery is far from being some slavish copy.

The theme of innocence runs throughout the book, and what Kovály's own experiences taught her was that, in a regime like that, no one is really innocent. It's a horrifying thing to contemplate, but by book's end, readers will come to realize that it's true.

"Vendyš wiped away the rain sliding down his nose. Steep Street was like an empty auditorium after a performance, with Vendyš the late-coming spectator who could only guess at what had taken place."

Kovály has a talent for writing one- to two-line descriptions of her characters that are tiny slices of perfection. So many of today's writers would take paragraphs or even pages to define each one of theirs. There are other passages in Innocence that are beautifully descriptive and psychologically insightful. By the time the mystery is solved and Kovály's story has come to an end, I felt emotionally brutalized-- and in awe. She distilled years of fear and horror and rage into this book, and as a result Innocence is haunting... and extraordinary. ( )

While reading this book, it didn't take too long to realize that the author had much more on her mind than writing an ordinary crime novel. There's way too much going on around the plot and the action that would lead anyone to believe this is just another mystery story. If you read the introduction to this book written by her son Ivan, he notes that

"Several personalities in the book see acts like lying, misrepresenting, informing, and betraying confidences as inconsequential, trivial matters, thus diluting the difference between guilt and innocence. Even murder is perceived as an accident for which no one is to blame."

He also calls the story an "intensely complex psychological drama," and this is much more the reality of this book than the "Chandleresque mystery" it's advertised as. It's true that the author loved Chandler, and as the intro goes on to say, like Marlowe, the main character of this novel "struggles" ... "to make her existence worthwhile in an environment devoid of respect for human life." What the author has given us here, I think, is a crime novel that serves as a vehicle for looking at a fictionalized picture of an historical reality in a totalitarian society -- where people live knowing they are under surveillance, where informing is sometimes a way just to stay ahead of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, and where the fact of who you are can often determine your fate. All of what I'm saying here is important because if you pick up this novel expecting a standard crime-novel plot trajectory, you're reading the wrong book. As I said, it didn't take me long to figure out that Kovály was writing a somewhat-disguised version of her own story, and I absolutely had to know more about this woman so I read her memoir, which underscores the idea that Kovaly wrote about human nature and the moral choices people make under some horrific and appalling circumstances in this "fractured incarcerated society."

This novel is bleak, one that really gets across the sense of the existing fear and paranoia of the time and one that reflects what ordinary people had to endure under this regime. But the bottom line is, it is also one woman's very personal (albeit disguised) story, and Heda Margolius Kovaly is a woman whose true story is worth knowing. A beautiful book -- maybe not so much a great mystery novel, but once you're into it you start to realize that the crime component truly is not the important story here. Even if it turned out to be something I wasn't really expecting, I loved this book. It won't be everyone's cuppa, but it most certainly was mine. ( )