The Moonstone - Softcover

Collins, Wilkie

3.91

93,036 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140620133 ISBN 13: 9780140620139

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1994

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The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel’s household is above suspicion. Hailed by T. S. Eliot as ‘the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels’, The Moonstone is a marvellously taut and intricate tale of mystery, in which facts and memory can prove treacherous and not everyone is as they first appear.

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Review:

"Perfect for long, cold, winter evenings" (The Times)

"A whodunit about a lost jewel with several different narrators 'the first English detective story' is so ingenious, so melodramatically rational, so druggy and glittery and cleverly elusive, that it triumphs over all its impersonators" (Observer)

"A great, bold, theatrical mystery story which never falters, written with huge confidence and style" (Joanna Trollope)

"Wilkie Collins, along with Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens is generally acknowledged to be the great-great-grandfather of the modern mystery, but it's hard to think of many modern mysteries as skillfully shaped and psychologically keen as this one. The story flirts with the conventions of Victorian melodrama, but the characters that people it are truly vivid" (Elizabeth Kostova)

"No wonder 21st-century novelists are influenced by the great Victorian serial writers with their rip-roaring plots. A twisting detective thriller" (Joanna Briscoe Independent)

From the Publisher:

Contains an 8-page plate section with long-unavailable pictures and drawings relating to Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone. Thoroughly edited and extensively annotated. Includes a 10,000-word section on Wilkie Collins's life and works, with a longer chapter on The Moonstone, anecdotes, critical perspectives, adaptations and spin-offs. Lavishly produced on natural, high-quality paper, and affordably priced.

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