The Moonstone

When Rachel Verinder inherits a magnificent Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday, the jewel disappears from her room during the night. Suspicion falls on servants, relatives and guests, but the mystery is complicated by conflicting testimony, concealed motives and the diamond’s violent colonial history. Collins tells the investigation through a sequence of narrators, combining detective fiction with a study of class, empire, addiction and the unreliability of apparently respectable witnesses.