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    The Moonstone
    The Moonstone
    The Moonstone
    Audiobook20 hours

    The Moonstone

    Written by Wilkie Collins

    Narrated by David Thorn

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Claimed as the first detective story in the English language, Wilkie Collins weaves his classic mystery through a series of narratives by various characters in the book who had first hand knowledge surrounding the disappearance of a large valuable yellow diamond (the Moonstone) from the room of its young owner, Rachel Verinder. Miss Verinder was bequeathed the diamond by a ne'er-do-well uncle who looted the jewel from the statue of the Hindu Moon God during the siege of Seringapatam-since which, Hindu Priests were bound and determined to recover the diamond and return it to its rightful place in the forehead of the statue of the god.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlcazar Audio Works
    Release dateJan 1, 2009
    ISBN9780982185353
    Author

    Wilkie Collins

    William Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and more than 100 essays. His best-known works are The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

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    Reviews for The Moonstone

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    • 2/5
      I had to abandon this at least 2/3 of the way through. I was listening to a Librivox recording and the third narrator, Christine?, killed it for me. Her English is so heavily accented to the American ear that I could hardly follow it anymore. This also occurred at a major transition point in the novel and I just couldn't get there when it slowed to a sanil's pace. Oh well.
    • 5/5
      An instant classic that enthralls with a mood that starts to enter your world as you read it. And what a story!!
    • 5/5
      One of Wilkie Collins's best-known novels, The Moonstone has all the elements that keep people reading Victorian thrillers even today. A beautiful heroine, a mysterious foreign jewel, a devious plot, a dying man's revenge, opium, and a scientific experiment all come together to create a highly enjoyable, even landmark reading experience. It also has some things you don't immediately associate with this genre, like a hilarious narrator in Gabriel Betteredge and some sharp, highly satirical statements about religious hypocrisy. All in all, this was one of the more satisfying novels I've read (or rather, reread) this year. On her birthday, Rachel Verinder inherits her uncle's infamous Moonstone, a gigantic yellow diamond with a flaw in its heart. Its bloody history reaches back centuries, and now it spreads its dark poison in a peaceful English family. Within hours the Moonstone is stolen and a long train of events is begun that will end in robbery and murder. Secrets will be outed, facades will fall, people will die... but a happy ending will be procured for the deserving. It just takes several hundred gripping pages to get there. Of course there's some latent racism evident here; the dark and sinister Indians who are tracking the Moonstone are portrayed as slinky, evil men. At least there is Mr. Murthwaite, the explorer who says the Indians are a "wonderful people." But though they do commit murder in the end, I found it a bit hard that they should be counted villains for seeking to take back something that was stolen from their temple. They sacrificed their caste to do it, too. If the positions were reversed, the Europeans would be the heroes to bravely penetrate the uncivilized wilds to rescue a cultural treasure. Right? I'm not sure I have ever read a sharper indictment of busybody Christianity than the character of Miss Clack, that inveterate do-gooder who, in her own words, is "always right" about what is best for everybody else. After her tracts and books are gently refused by Lady Verinder on account of their upsetting nature and her precarious health, Miss Clack peppers them all throughout Lady Verinder's house (on her couch, in her robe pocket, etc.) so that she cannot escape them. And all with such an odious air of self-righteous zeal. Christians everywhere (myself included), take note. Another striking character is Rosanna Spearman, the servant who falls in love far above her class and kills herself as a result. Collins handles her with sad poignancy and I'll always feel sorry when I think of her. If you have the Oxford World's Classics edition, skip the introduction by John Sutherland. I always feel that introductions should be written by people who at least seem to like the work in question. This supercilious piece, however, had a sneer all over it. No thanks. Get to the good stuff right off and leave superior guys like this one to talk to the air.
    • 3/5
      Certainly a classic, but a bit of a chore to get through.
    • 3/5
      I read this back in high school. When you have to read a book assigned to you a lot of times you dislike it automatically. I liked it, much to my surprise, and would read it again to see if I'd enjoy it as an adult.
      Have it on e-book now.
    • 4/5
      Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but don't ask Rachel Verinder to agree with that maxim. She only had twelve hours to bask in the glow of the rare yellow diamond that was given to her on her 18th birthday. This stolen diamond came complete with an Indian curse and three Indians in hot pursuit of it as it once again disappears and becomes the focal point of this Victorian detective novel.Collins uses multiple narratives to ascertain the events of that fateful night and the year following it. These eye-witness accounts from some colorful characters help move the story along, although having been originally written in serial form, the book tends to be wordy with many needless cliffhangers. My limits of credulity were stretched by the reenactment of the night of the crime, and I became impatient with too many sealed letters that mostly revealed "secrets" that weren't relevant to the main story. Overall, I enjoyed the characters and dry humor more than I liked the story. If you like Victorian melodrama, you will most certainly like this book.
    • 4/5
      Often considered the prototype for the English detective novel, The Moonstone fulfils all its promise and more. The plot is on the surface quite simple: a gemstone of great cultural significance disappears from a country house. Who has taken it? Why? Is there a connection with three itinerant Indian jugglers seen in the vicinity of the house? And why does the daughter of the house, in whose care the gemstone was, take so much umbrage at the investigation?We are introduced to a wide range of characters who retell their part in the mystery. I reacted the most favourably to Gabriel Betteridge, the steward to the house; to Sergeant Cuff, the esteemed detective brought in to solve the mystery (but who is thwarted by both the deliberate and involuntary actions of others) and Ezra Jennings, a medical man with a tragic past and a dark secret. But there is also humour in the story; Betteridge and Cuff have ample reserves of wit; and another minor participant, Miss Drusilla Clack, a cousin with an obsession with evangelising and handing out religious tracts, is written in terms that stop short of caricature. Some of the situations and plot twists may seem overtly melodramatic and perhaps a little contrived; but all clichés started out as something new, and for the detective story, this book is where many of those clichés had their birth. And the story betrays its original publication, as a serial in the London periodical All the Year Round, edited by Collins' friend Charles Dickens. There are shocking revelations at the end of certain chapters, and although there are no overt cliff-hangers, readers will see that they were not far behind.Like Dickens, Collins shows us upper-class England in the mid-nineteenth century, and the observant reader will learn much about Victorian society, personal finance and attitudes. The mistress of the house from where the gem disappears, Lady Verinder, is depicted as an aristocrat of a particular type (perhaps to make the aristocracy seem less remote). I was reminded of the historian Edmund Wilson, who observed that there was never a working-class revolution in Britain because the managerial class knew when it was time to negotiate (and the trade unions put advancing the cause of their members before political objectives). To this, after reading The Moonstone, we could perhaps add that there was a segment of the British aristocracy that nonetheless recognised that they had obligations towards the people in their service; and those obligations went beyond the financial and the social into matters of respect. Not all of the upper class did this; but enough did to prevent socialist ideas penetrating too far into the rural working class in particular. (Nonetheless, one minor character looks forward to a time when "the poor will rise against the rich".)It is worth noting here that modern readers will find matters here that could be troubling: racism, sexism and classism (not to mention the use of tobacco and other substances). The racism is mostly that of ignorance, and indeed there is a secondary character who has travelled widely in India and provides perspective, although how much of that is supposed to be from a genuine interest and how much is inserted to move the plot along is another matter. And given current debate about returning cultural treasures to their places of origin, the end of the book makes quite a contemporary point.These points aside, The Moonstone was an engaging story, brought to life by some engaging characters, yet very clearly showing how our society has changed in some 170 years.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good story though a bit wordy. Loved some of the characters very much!
    • 4/5
      That is a page-turner! The Moonstone kept me guessing until the end. Collins has you fixing on one character, then another, as the suspected thief of the Moonstone (when all the time it never belonged to any of those thieving Brits, but to a Hindu temple in India). Collins is a talented writer, no doubt. The only doubt is why Dickens got the one-up on him. Both are so sexist, though, and terribly misinformed as to the intellect of women, and even more misguided in their esteem of male intelligence.
      Miss Clack, as the hypocritical Christian, was given a soundly amusing treatment.
    • 5/5
      Wilkie Collins was a close friend of Dickens and is best known for The Woman in White and I was given this Penguin Classics version of The Moonstone as a recommendation. And it’s a cracker! Often held up as the inspiration for ‘the detective novel’, the story is narrated by several different characters within it, all with distinct voices and a particular axe to grind. It tells of The Moonstone, a particularly large uncut diamond that is left by her uncle to 18 year old Rachel on her birthday but disappears from the family house on the same night. The story follows the origins of the diamond and its interested parties both upstairs and downstairs, as well as the shadowy Indians who are trying to claim it back for the Hindu state from whence it came. It’s romantic, clever, funny in parts, full of more ghastly characters than admirable ones, and the combination draws you in. It’s a classic for a good reason.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this immensely! I liked the structure - a sort of 'found record'/collection of primary and secondary sources in the form of family papers, journal entries, etc - and, for the most part, I liked the story itself. I didn't like the double-twist of who actually stole the Moonstone, as one robber would've sufficed and the method under which it was originally taken is dubious, to say the least. Apparently the author considers this part of the plot to be the high point of the story; for me, it was actually a deflating moment when my suspension of disbelief broke into several pieces.I really enjoyed the idea of several subjective/biased narrators, and some of the sections are downright hilarious - like poor sanctimonious Miss Clack, who feels it her good Christian duty to consistently interfere in her relatives' affairs, and who couldn't understand why no one would read the tracts she was constantly handing out. That section was a hoot! Gabriel Betteredge, who narrates the vast majority of the story, has just as much faith in Robinson Cursoe as Miss Clack does in her Christian tracts, isn't much better, but draws an interesting distinction between stereotypical hypocritical evengelical Christianity and secular worship.I wasn't much of a fan of Rachel Verinder, either, which dampened some of my enjoyment of the story, as she is the central character in all this. She does not have a narrative, but you see her through so many of the characters' eyes, and quite frankly, I found none of them appealing. She's only 18, granted, but she grated on my very last nerve with her erratic behavior.Ezra Jennings, I discovered as I read the original introductions, probably struck quite a close nerve with the author. His was a sad tale, and I was genuinely sad when he died, and did everything in his power to not leave any hint of his life behind him in death.All in all, a fabulous classic, and perhaps the first of the "cursed stolen jewel" stories, as well as the first detective novel, at least in the sense of developing some of the tropes of the genre, as there is no one central detective.
    • 5/5
      What can I say other than the book is worth the hype? I wasn't sure at the start; I listened to the audiobook version - which was excellently done - and Gabriel Betteredge's opening narrative is... trying. I loved his character the best and the narrator who played his part played it to the hilt, which meant it felt like there was an amiable, loveable, old man telling me a story by taking the longest possible route. I was charmed, while at the same time wanting to prod him along, and honestly, if I had to hear much more about Robinson Crusoe I might have started pulling out my own hair. Once we get past Betteredge's ramblings (which take up the first 40% of the book), the story moves along much quicker and the story becomes far more interesting, as the twist at the midway point was riveting. I only ever listen to audio while I'm in the car, because I'm so easily distracted, but I found myself carrying my phone and portable speaker out to the garden to listen to The Moonstone while I weeded, and found 3.5 hours disappeared in a blink. I got so close to the end today by the time I got home, I came straight in and grabbed my print edition so I could finish it. I guessed who the villain was at the start, but then the twist came in and I had NO idea where he was going with the mystery; subtle misdirections were everywhere in the narratives and so, while I never really gave up my notions of who was guilty, I was entirely ready to believe I had the wrong end of the stick until the end. The Moonstone is excellent and I highly recommend it; it's not a light, breezy read to be done in one or two settings, but it does reward the reader's commitment at the end. Book themes for Boxing Day/St. Stephen’s Day: Read anything where the main character has servants (paid servants count, NOT unpaid) or is working as a servant him-/ herself.
    • 5/5
      Besides The woman in white The Moonstone is the other great novel for which Wilkie Collins is best remembered. Both novels are based on a detective element, and maybe this is why they find more readers than his other novels. Both novels make use of an innovative narrative technique of succesive witness statements. While in The woman in white these "episodes" or "narratives" are of fairly equal, balanced length, The Moonstone begins with a very long narrative of 160+ pages, subsequent "narratives" are ever shorter. The successive episodes make for a rush in ongoing readingThere are many legends about cursed gems, but this story element is far in the background. The main interest in in the very rational probe into the disappearance of the diamond. The plot has many unexpected twists and hence a very exciting and interesting development.It is tempting to see whether the novel could be interpreted other than merely a detective story. The meme of Betteridge insistent reading of Robinson Crusoe is so pertinent that I would take it as a clue to a deeper meaning of the book. Betteridge reads Robinson Crusoe as other people read the Bible. He reads nothing but, and tends to open it randomly and then always finds an appropriate piece of wisdom (exactly the way the bible is used). This slight at "bible readers" in fact the majority of the Victorian establishment is like a criticism of their moral values. Various motives of the novel also suggest a contrasting of the religious zeal of the Indians as opposed to the mere interest in money of Western people.Reading The Moonstone gave me the feeling that Sarah Waters seems much more influenced by Collins than by Dickens. To me some elements of The Moonstone came unexpectedly together while I was simultaneously reading works by Coleridge and De Quincey.
    • 4/5
      The multiple narrators work great — it helps that the two with the most potential to be annoying, Betteredge and Clack, are instead charming and funny in their self-awareness and lack of it. The influence of Dickens is preponderant in the tragic character of Ezra Jennings, a Sidney Carton-a-like made more interesting by his opium addiction being informed by the author's own. Then there's fine young Victorian fellow Franklin Blake, who didn't do much for me but is very much at home in a book like this, rose-fancier and proto-supersleuth Police Sgt. Cuff, buff solicitor Bruff, the orientalist Murthwaite... I reckon Dickens had a hand in the naming too, come to think of it. At the centre of it all, but without her own narrative voice, is fruity young Rachel Verinder who ends up getting a pretty fair shake compared to many another Victorian heroine. I also appreciated the ending, where the stone finds its way back to the land it was looted from. Whether it's women, foreigners, or opium addicts, old Wilkie seems to have been a pretty enlightened chap.The plot is engaging, though hardly the misdirectional masterpiece some claim. As a detective story it's fairly rudimentary, but still ticking off a ton of what would become staple tropes and very impressive given its lack of antecedents. It's also a capable romance and adventure tale. About 150% too long of course — why use 80,000 words when 200,000 will do? Serialise the shit out of that! That's how they rocked and rolled back then, isn't it.
    • 5/5
      Now I might have to read Robinson Crusoe!
    • 4/5
      The Moonstone follows the eponymous gem's troubled history from its original home in a Hindu temple in India, through a series of thefts, and focuses on a final robbery after it resurfaces as a birthday present to a wealthy young British heiress. Touted as possibly the first British detective novel, it's overall a fun ride, although a few things about it keep me from giving it an A. The characters are nicely drawn, but a few of them are more irritating than I'd like to have to endure, and this is made worse by the narrative structure of the book: Collins breaks up the story into several sections, each narrated by a different member of the plot, and a couple of these characters are nearly unbearable to me. It's an impressive exercise in creative flawed characters and I recognize that the reader is meant to see them as comical in those flaws, but I have no patience with the kinds of flaws they're given (members of older generations thinking they're better/wiser than people younger than them just because they've lived longer, with a healthy dash of salt-of-the-earth folks are better than anyone else, and religious fanaticism; both are frustrating and not amusing to me). My other complaint is that the original theft of the moonstone is a clear act of colonialist hubris, and although I suspect that Collins is trying craft the story at least in a way as a commentary on such a thing, the Indian characters who strive to retrieve the gem are cast as wholly unsympathetic people - exotically evil - and I take a heaping pile of issue with that. Honestly, I would *love* someone to write a companion novel from the viewpoint of the Indians, who are frustrated at nearly every turn in trying to regain what's rightfully theirs by ridiculous and privileged white men, who are so desperately trying to hold on to what they've stolen. I would read the *heck* out of that novel.
    • 5/5
      Excellent in many ways. A well crafted story, characters have well developed personalities, relationships show polite and actual behaviors in language and action, demonstrates acts of racism and inclusion by white English nobility. Also include are class distinctions and behaviors within those classes. The challenges and difficulties created when one crosses over the class boundaries or moral/ethical boundaries is demonstrated by several characters.
    • 5/5
      Published in 1868, this is often described as the first detective novel in the English language (Poe's earlier Dupin tales were short stories, and more exercises in ratiocination than full fleshed out stories; and Dickens's novel Bleak House contained Inspector Bucket of the Detective in one strand only of the story). It feels quite like a modern detective mystery, with carefully laid clues and red herrings surrounding the eponymous Indian diamond which is sacred in the Hindu religion. Much of the book is told from the point of view of different characters, most of whom are in a sense detectives - there is no single acknowledged sleuth here, though Sergeant Cuff is the nearest thing in the first part of the book, while the servant Gabriel Betteredge also fulfills that role for much of the first half of the story. There is a Sherlock Holmes vibe twenty years before Conan Doyle's first published story, as per Sergeant Cuff: "At one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end there was a spot of ink on a table cloth that nobody could account for. In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never with such a thing as a trifle yet", and "It's only in books that the officers of the detective force are superior to the weakness of making a mistake". A great read.
    • 5/5
      This book has lived with me since forever. No way I can be objective about it. I've been re-reading a few old books which were favourites in my late teens and it is interesting to see which come out best (or worst) in the class/gender/race teeth gnashing stakes. Wilkie Collins comes out quite well (born 1824), John Buchan not so well (b. 1875), Kipling (b. 1865) not too bad except for women! Shall try some Rider Haggard next (b. 1856).
    • 5/5
      This one gets the full five stars from me - I absolutely loved it. Written in 1868 and considered by many to be the first detective novel, it is amazing to me how accessible the writing is - it reads like a modern day mystery. Told in eight different narratives that are presented as written testimony, the mystery of what happened to the Moonstone slowly unfolds and kept me guessing almost to the end. I listened to the audio, which is brilliantly narrated by a full cast, and followed along in the print book. I feel like the very first character we meet totally steals the show - Gabriel Betteredge is the House-Steward for Lady Julia Verinder, and is present at the events leading up to the Moonstone going missing and the dramatic events that follow. He consults his favorite book, [Robinson Crusoe], for answers to life's questions:"I am not superstitious. I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as a saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco - I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad - Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice - Robinson Crusoe. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much - Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and Robinson Crusoe put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture in the bargain."Betteredge also catches "detective fever" when he meets the famous Sergeant Cuff, who is hired to solve the mystery of the missing diamond. He just cannot resist doing some detecting on his own. The results are delightful, and thus begins the reader's descent into solving the crime. As each new narrative adds another layer, the story takes on dimension and the little details that were shared in the beginning take on new meaning. From start to finish, this one was full of fabulous for me. If you haven't read this one yet, what on earth are you waiting for?!
    • 5/5
      In 2015 The Guardian published a list of the 100 best novels published in English, listed in chronological order of publication. Under Covid inspired lockdown, I have taken up the challenge.Moonstone, from 1868, and 19th in the list, was an absolute delight to read. An early detective story, written from the different points of view of vatious participants in the drama, Wilkie Collins has given us a book full of fun. I enjoyed the caricatures of the different voices - the stalwart steward, the religious crank cousin and so on. The plot is interesting enough to maintain the readers interest, and by the end the book had become a real page-turner.
    • 5/5
      Given my awkward history with Collins, I must attribute my success with The Moonstone with the mystique of the Medina. It was frightfully hot in Morocco and I slipped into this novel as an escape and enjoyed its serial protagonists, its clumsy racism, its outrageous plot. Along with Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma this novel fit the definition of transportive in an airtight manner.

      The Moonstone has been regarded as the first detective movel. Its disparate perspectives don't quite overlap and there is a lack of torque about the affair. The lingering gray ambiguity suits the novel's mood, which unsettles. The Moonstone does yield a fertile field of suspects. The representation of opium is a curious bend to the whole process.
    • 2/5
      (Original Review, 1981-01-28)The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed. She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I moved one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means of attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately. The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window—and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps—and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer—and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted—never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression—bright, frank, and intelligent—appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model—to be charmed by the modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features in which the perfectly shaped figure ended—was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of a dream.
    • 4/5
      #133. [The Moonstone], [[Wilkie Collins]]The Moonstone is a name given to a large yellow diamond stolen from a religious shrine in India during a battle between the British and the Indians in 1799 by John Herncastle as witnessed by his cousin John Verinder. The diamond carried a curse which brought trouble to whom ever possessed it.In brief "The Moonstone" is a suspenseful story of the gifting of the diamond to a young lady on her 18th birthday in 1848, its disappearance the same night and the subsequent search for it until 1850. The way the mystery is told is most interesting. Eleven different characters relating their role as well as to what they could personally attest to the robbery. This provides various views on what occurred and how the actions of others were interpreted. In these narratives the reader learns of the history of the diamond and it's three Indian protectors, the gifting, the loss and the search for the diamond from a long-time servant in the country home of the wealthy family, the poor Christian spinster cousin who thrives on doing good work and spreading the faith. Two male cousins one a gambler and the other somewhat of a dilettante, both wishing to marry the same cousin. The wealthy side of the family, the family solicitor, the village doctor and his assistant, a police sargent who specializes in family thefts and roses, and a well traveled man with certainty some Indian heritage. It provides an interesting cross-section of life in Victorian England.It is one of the earliest mystery novels written, and was serialized, likely in a newspaper, when first published. For those of us use to the pace of today's mysteries we may find it a little slow in places but it did not lose my attention. Collins is to be commended for keeping all the strands of the story straight.Reviewed September 18, 2018⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • 5/5
      So much better than I would have expected. You got the Victorian novel mojo, plus what amounts to a really good mystery story. Read it serially (like it was published, albeit on an accelerated schedule), which definitely added to the experience.
    • 4/5
      I ended up finishing this novel rather quickly - it's an early detective novel and though it had a bit of a slow start, I did really get drawn into it and at some point just had to go on reading because I wanted to know what happened.In the novel a young girl, Rachel, receives a precious gem known as the Moonstone through an inheritance. The stone is said to be an ancient hindoo religious artifact, looked for by hindoo brahmins who will stop at nothing to retrieve it. While she and her family are still debating what to do with the gem, it gets stolen... After the disappearance a famous detective is called in to try to retrieve it, but he is led astray and the gem remains undiscovered until a year later, when the investigation is restarted and some unexpected findings lead to a startling conclusion.Collins lets several of the main characters in the novel tell separate parts of the story, each person telling the part in which he/she was most involved. I like the way he gives each character a voice of his/her own and uses the stories to tell the different parts and to show different perspectives - at different points in time characters may or may not be aware of specific facts, making it an interesting intrigue to follow. I did feel that in his characterization of the main characters Collins is sometimes a bit over-the-top, but this also added an element of humor, so it wasn't very disturbing.The character of Sergeant Cuff is a bit of a proto-Holmes - an eccentric detective with a love of roses and a tendency to spend long periods musing over the facts, but who also follows concrete clues to get to the truth. Though his investigations lead him to the wrong conclusion, this is not altogether surprising, since the final solution is not what you expected.Though I did have a suspicion of the right perpetrator at some point half way through, it long remained unclear how he could have pulled it off and what happened exactly on the night of the robbery. Collins really keeps you guessing, but brings everything to a nice ending in which everything is explained.
    • 3/5
      Not near as good as Woman in White - supposedly a mystery involving a gem stolen by three Indian men, the theft of which breaks apart a potential love affair.
    • 4/5
      Considered the first detective story, and a classic suspense story, Collins' The Moonstone is a cycling, twisting tale of intrigue and theft. From narrator to narrator, the parts of the world unfold until clues seem to build to one conclusion, and then another, surprising the characters along with the reader.Although it took me some time to get into the book, once I passed through the first two narrators' sections, I could hardly put the book down, and so many moments and details surprised me that it was an incredibly satisfying read, and one I'm surprised I didn't manage to read sooner. I'd absolutely recommend this to anyone who loves the classics, from Dickens on through others, and anyone who enjoys mysteries--this was a fun one.
    • 3/5
      It is very interesting to see the difference in this Victorian mystery - one of the first straight mystery novels - and detective fiction today. The shifting perspectives keeps the story from bogging down. But, there is still way too much detail for modern day readers. It is understandable that Collins had to lay things out much plainer for his audience - they hadn't been raised on detective fiction and CSI.

      I would recommend this book, though, to readers that love detective fiction (if only because it was one of the very first in the genre) and to anyone that loves Victorian fiction. To readers that are trying to read 1001 Books To Read Before You Die, it is worth the read. I can't say that about all of them.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable detective story.