Kovály’s prose carries echoes of Albert Camus’ novels … Yet, Innocence is astonishingly — and brilliantly—written as a thriller in the style of Raymond Chandler, an author Kovály hugely admired. The mean streets her characters tread are infinitely more treacherous than the dark blocks of Los Angeles but she creates a plot packed with surprise, a character-driven, murderous matrix that sustains an amoral universe in an all-too-convincing story.