Innocence

Innocence is an autobiographical mystery story based on the life of the author, Heda Margolius Kovaly.  Even before the reader is captured by the fictional characters who work at the Horizon movie theatre, the introduction to the book captivates you with Ivan Margolious' biographical information about his mother. The author herself has a fascinating life story that is explained in this introduction and pulls the reader in even before getting to the actual mystery novel.

Written originally in the 1980s this story was written under pseudonym, Helena Novakova, which is also the main character's name in the novel.  Published in 1985 under the "return to stricter living conditions in Czechoslovakia", Kovaly did not want to create any problems for her friends living in Prague.  It wasn't until  2013, after Heda's death, that Innocence was republished with her name rightfully on the cover.  Heda Kovaly lived through the Holocaust, having grown up in Prague, she along with her husband and parents were first gathered in the Lodz ghetto by the Nazis and then transported to Auschwitz.  Both she and her husband, Rudolf were able to exist in the camps and eventually separately escape and help the resistance movement.  After the war she and Rudolf became committed to the Communist Party for a better life in Prague where they were reunited in 1945.   In January 1952 Rudolf was arrested and accused unjustly of "anti-state conspiracy" and as a defendant in the Slansky Trial, where innocent men were tried for fabricated offenses of spying and sabotage, he was executed in December 1952.  Heda remarried in 1955 and followed her second husband, Paval Kovaly to the United States.  She wrote her memoir, Under A Cruel Star, in 1973.

Innocence is the story of Helena whose husband Karel has recently been arrested for suspicion of espionage against the government.  Helena gets a job in a local cinema as an usher.  There we meet
Marie, Ladinka, and Mrs. Kourimska, among many other characters they interact with.
Helena is only looking to fill her time and wait till her husband will be released from prison.  She is confident that his innocence will be confirmed and he will be back home soon.  When the story opens with the murder of a young boy whose body is found in the theatre, an investigation begins.  The vague details of the case start to reveal the female ushers private lives.  As the convoluted facets of their lives are brought to light we see how the ushers lives are entangled and each is hiding a dark secret.

Though it is a fabulous mystery story just on its own merits, knowing that in a way you are reading an almost biographical account of life in the Czech Republic during the post war era, makes this novel seem that much more chilling.  This mystery recreates for the reader the stifling atmosphere of political and personal oppression of the early days of Communist Czechoslovakia.