“The great draw of Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street is the menacing view it gives us of communist Prague.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
Setting: Prague
Number of Crimes (Titles in Series): 1
Last Seen (Most recent title): Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street
Description: 1950s Prague is a city of numerous daily terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say under pressure to a State Security agent. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.
Heda Kovaly a Czech writer and translator, was born in 1919 in Prague to Jewish parents. Her crime novel, Innocence, is based in large part on her own experiences in early 1950s Prague. Kovály died in 2010 at age 91.
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