The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

from goodreads

5 stars

My mom is an avid reader. When I think back to my childhood I remember her always reading. Usually Robert Ludlum or Anne McCaffrey. Our house was an old farm house and in one of the rooms my mom put ceiling to floor shelving that covered the whole width of the walls. That room was "the library". I mostly paid attention to the books that were in the kids section. But, every now and again I would look at the adult books and dream that some day I would be like my mom and read all these book. I imagined what the stories were about. I had my favourite covers. These books became friends even though I hadn't cracked the spine. The Moonstone was one of those books that I couldn't wait to grow up and read. I thought it was about actual moonstone rocks and not a diamond called the moonstone (I grew up in the mineral capital of Canada and I had moonstone outcroppings just down the road), and I thought it was a mystical fairy thing and not a english countryside mystery, but, that is a minor detail.

Synopsis

The moonstone is a sacred rock in India. There is a curse on it that anyone who takes it from its home will have nothing but hardships and sadness. During a british siege an officer, John Herncastle, killed the diamond's guards and took the stone. Returning to England he lead a secluded life, and was nervous about his own gruesome demise. He did die, and left the diamond to his niece, to be given to her on her 18th birthday. The rest of the book are the events that unfold once she has the diamond.

My Thoughts

I simply loved this book. There were so many twists and turns I wasn't sure who the culprit was. I thought I had it figured out and then something happened that made my hypothesis completely wrong. This happened two or three times. There middle section did drag on bit, but on the whole it was an exciting and surprisingly quick read, considering the print was so small and it was published in the mid 19th century (not a time period usually known for its fluff literature). I didn't have to reread sentences to make sure I understood what it meant, like I sometimes have to do with other authors of this era.

The characters were very well developed. I loved the butler Betteredge. He thought that all the answers in life could be found by reading Robinson Crusoe. If something perplexed him he would open Robinson Crusoe and find a passage that would either put him at ease or give him a notion of what to do.

T.S. Eliot had it right when he said The Moonstone was "the best of modern English detective novels." It was one of the first of its kind. Which I think, makes it even more remarkable.

I look forward to reading more by Wilkie Collins. Hopefully his other books leave me as satisfied as I felt after reading this one.