The Moonstone

One of Wilkie Collins’s most celebrated works, The Moonstone is another successful mystery novel, this time about an ancient (and cursed) Hindu diamond that is mysteriously stolen from a young Englishwoman. The hocus-pocus nature of the plot is a bit too contrived, and as a result the book is less satisfying than The Woman in White (1859). But it features more actual suspense as well as several excellent secondary characters.