Wilkie Collins 
The Moonstone 

Considered the first true detective story Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868) is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. Originally serialized in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round, it introduced many hallmarks of detective fiction, including an English country house setting, bungling local policemen, and a large number of false suspects. In it, Rachel Verinder, a young English woman, inherits a large Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday from her uncle who was stationed in India. The diamond itself has great religious significance as well as monetary value and becomes the focus of several determined efforts to acquire it. Filled with romance, suspense and a healthy dose of mystery, The Moonstone is a classic page-turner.

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William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. The son of painter William Collins, he lived in France and Italy as a child and became fluent in both languages. Abandoning a law career, his first novel, Antonina was published in 1850. That same year he met Charles Dickens and the two became friends and frequent collaborators. Collins best-known works were published in the 1860s, including The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868). The latter has been called the first modern English detective novel.