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). 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). 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.

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. And the story betrays its original publication, as a serial in the London periodical All the Year Round, edited by Collins' friend Charles Dickens.

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. 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. 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. We are introduced to a wide range of characters who retell their part in the mystery. 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? The plot is on the surface quite simple: a gemstone of great cultural significance disappears from a country house. Often considered the prototype for the English detective novel, The Moonstone fulfils all its promise and more.

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