The Moonstone - Kostenloses Hörbuch

The Moonstone is a novel by Wilkie Collins, serialised in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round in 1868 and published as a book the same year. It is widely regarded as one of the first full-length detective novels in English.

The story begins with a family record of how the Moonstone, a great yellow diamond, was taken from a Hindu shrine during the storming of Seringapatam in 1799 by an English officer, John Herncastle. Decades later, Herncastle leaves the stone in his will to his niece, Rachel Verinder, as a gift for her eighteenth birthday. Her cousin Franklin Blake brings it to the family's country house in Yorkshire, where three mysterious Indian men have been seen lingering nearby. On the morning after the birthday party, the diamond is gone. Local police make little progress, and the celebrated Sergeant Cuff is called from London. Rachel behaves in ways no one can explain, a housemaid with a troubled past draws suspicion, and the household's harmony begins to break apart.

Collins tells the story through a series of narrators, including the family's elderly house-steward Gabriel Betteredge, a pious and comically self-righteous cousin and several others, each writing what they personally witnessed. The result is both an absorbing puzzle and a lively comedy of character. It suits readers of classic mysteries, Victorian sensation fiction and multi-voiced novels.