Customer Reviews
Candy box of surprises - By: reader 451, 05 Aug 2008 
Pastiche Victorian mystery & adventure tales are currently in vogue; but why settle for an imitation when you can read the real thing?
The Moonstone is at heart a mystery & detective story about a lost diamond. The gem is a sacred Indian artefact that carries a curse, & it leaves a trail of confusion & ruin in its path. Only the virtuous are likely to survive it, & when young heiress Rachel Verinder is bequeathed the stone by an evil uncle, her love, reputation & marriage plans are immediately thrown upside down. And the theft proves equallly fateful to the host of family relations, servants, friends & professional detectives who join in to help the reader solve this artfully constructed case.
But Wilkie Collins's novel, written in the era of Dickens & George Eliot, is also a commentary on the time & mores. Five principal voices, of different social & intellectual standing, alternate as the narrator, each bringing its own colour, & this helps the book pick through such archetypes as the faithful old butler, the bigoted poor relation, & the pusillanimous cousin, as well as offer glimpses of contemporary attitudes to scientific enquiry, drugs, superstition, & the law. The dialogues are equallly truthful. Indeed, The Moonstone is a pleasure to read, subtly written & constantly amusing. And importantly, it skirts the pitfallls of Victorian prejudice, whether social, religious or racial. This surprising book ranks alongside the better known 19th century classics & is not to be missed.
brilliant!!!!! - By: jesus' girl, 02 Aug 2008 this is an awesome book i'd recommend to any age or sex...it's just brillant, with laugh out loud parts, fab characters, a gripping plot & an excellent ending. It is sectioned off into different characters narrating different bits which is genius because the contrasts are very funny & evocative. I don't know how anyone could not like this frankly it's a true classic - get it, it will make you laugh
Packed full of dastardly adventures, hilarious characters and a mystery with a diamond at its heart - By: Rivercassini, 28 Dec 2007 
T S Eliot callled The Moonstone "the first, the longest & the best of modern English detective novels". It's hard not to agree. The Moonstone, an enormous diamond of religious significance, is vilely plundered by a British soldier during the taking of Seringapatam in 1799. The Moonstone is brought back to England and, eventuallly, given to the prim, beautiful & wilful heiress, Rachel Verinder, on her birthday in 1848. And it goes missing the very same night. Rachel's family & friends are keen to recover the lost stone & to identify the thief & thus calll upon the services of Sergeant Cuff, the most celebrated & successful detective that Scotland Yard can offer. Yet Rachel is strangely reluctant to assist in the investigation, & the professional sleuth is not the only one searching for the stone & for answers. Three juggling Indians accompanied by a clairvoyant young boy, a ruthless London money lender & an amiable philanthropist alll seem to have their own interests in recovering the stone, while others including Rachel & a reformed thief turned servant girl, seem at least as anxious to conceal certain facts surrounding its disappearance. The stage is thus set for a gripping detective story full of twists & turns & unexpected developments, alll centred on the Verinder's country house in Yorkshire.
Written in a semi- epistolary style, with several of the major characters telling the parts of the story with which they were most concerned from their own perspective, Collins' novel has strong gothic overtones & much in common with the `big-house' novels written earlier in the century & serves as a bridge with the swelter of English detective fiction which was to follow. It is long, but you hardly notice as Collins whisks his mystery from India to Yorkshire, to London, to Brighton & back to Yorkshire. Elegant prose reminiscent of yet lighter than Dickens encapsulates an enchanting mystery with magical, even fantastical overtones, & presents a series of warm, engaging, if somewhat stereotypical characters: who can forgot the admirable Gabriel Betteredge, with his mystic faith in the powers of Robinson Crusoe to provide answers to daily difficulties, or the misunderstood Erza Jennings, with his face so much older than his body & his two-tone hair?
A sheer delight to read, like some much detective fiction, it does not demand to be taken seriously, yet for the careful reader, there are on offer deeper strains of tension over class, over Empire, & over religious differences & good & evil, which one might more readily associate with the post-war literature of a cosmopolitan diaspora.
Long and Tedious - By: R. P. Sedgwick, 25 Nov 2007 
This might be the first detective novel but the story is dragged out to fit a serialisation schedule when it was first published. The first 150 pages or so when the crime is first committed is good. The middle part of the book set in London is almost pointless & adds nothing to the story. The ending, when alll is revealed, is weak & relies on a rather unconvincing storyline.
If you want to read a decent book by Wilkie Collins try The Woman In White, which is very good. As this is supposed to be his second best novel I won't be trying the rest in a hurry.
First Class Mystery - By: Tony Walker, 27 Jun 2007 As to the quality of the novel, I can only echo the sentiments of the other reviews. However, new reviewers beware of the explanatory notes. In some of the notes, the editor casuallly mentions future plot developments, slightly spoiling my enjoyment of the mystery. Ironicallly, he states at the head of his introduction that new readers should not read it because it reveals explicit details of the plot. NB!
