The Moonstone

A purloined jewel that carries a mysterious curse, an indefatigable British police sergeant, a drama of theft and murder in a spacious country house. The Moonstone - a priceless Indian diamond the size of a bird's egg, brought to England as spoils of war - is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. When the stone is stolen that very night, suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself. The phlegmatic Sergeant Cuff is called in, and with the help of Betteredge, the Robinson Crusoe-reading loquacious steward, the mystery of the missing stone is ingeniously solved. In this intricately plotted mystery, Wilkie Collins cleverly disguises all the necessary pieces to the puzzle, that his surprise ending takes the reader's breath away.