She is also a faithful member of the Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, which rescues “unredeemed fathers’ trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irreclaimable parent… abridg them immediately to suit the proportions of the innocent son.” (Fortunately, Betteredge does return as an important character later on.) A poor relation of the wealthy Verinder family, Miss Clack is a Christian who feels it is her duty to evangelize to everyone she meets. He is an astute and often funny narrator, and I found him to be exceedingly good company his section was my favorite one of the book, and I was a bit disappointed when, after 170 pages, Drusilla Clack took over. Betteredge is a man in his 70s and completely devoted to his employer.

The first narrator is Gabriel Betteredge, “house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder” (Rachel’s mother). In an attempt to get at the truth, numerous guests who were present for Rachel’s birthday are asked to write down their personal accounts of what they witnessed. She receives it on her eighteenth birthday, and that night, it vanishes from her room in the posh Verinder estate. The soldier-a cruel and rapacious man-dies years later, leaving the diamond to his niece, Rachel Verinder. The novel opens with the theft of the legendary yellow diamond, which was purloined by an English soldier during a battle between Southern Indians and the British East India Company. This is not to say that The Moonstone isn’t a good book I just found it a little tough going at times. Many were the nights I fell asleep reading the novel I finally downloaded the Kindle version ( free!) and finished it while I was on vacation in late January.

That obviously didn’t happen, partly because The Moonstone is very long: over 400 pages of small print. Well, I had never read The Moonstone, so I checked it out of the library at the end of December, thinking that I would indeed make it my first review of the new year. Reread it recently in a book group and we all agreed that it reads well, and is surprisingly current.” “If you have not read The Moonstone then that should be your first book of 2018. A few weeks ago, my friend Vallery suggested I read The Moonstone (1868), which is considered to be the first full-length detective novel (Edgar Allan Poe wrote some short-story mysteries in the 1840s).

The moonstone 1868