The Moonstone

The Moonstone is a novel by the British writer Wilkie Collins, first serialised in 1868 in All the Year Round, the magazine edited by Charles Dickens. It is one of the earliest detective novels in English and helped set the ground rules for the genre.

A large yellow diamond, cut from a Hindu idol, comes to England and is given to Rachel Verinder as a present for her eighteenth birthday, left to her by an uncle who had been an army officer in India. It carries a religious significance as well as a great price.

Within hours of the party the diamond is gone from Rachel's room, and nobody in the house can say what they were doing when it disappeared. Three Hindu priests have devoted their lives to recovering the stone, and a celebrated detective, Sergeant Cuff, is brought in to try to get it back.

Collins tells the story through the statements and letters of the people involved, so the reader has to assemble the events from several accounts rather than one narrator. He adapted the novel for the stage in 1877, and it remains one of the foundations of the detective form.