The Moonstone cover art

The Moonstone

Penguin Classics

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The Moonstone

By: Wilkie Collins, Sandra Kemp - introduction
Narrated by: Jessie Buckley, Richard Cordery, Julian Wadham, Hugh Fraser, Bruce Alexander, Oscar Batterham, Matthew Spencer, James MacCallum, Stewart Clarke, Jot Davies
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Jessie Buckley, Richard Cordery, Julian Wadham, David Sturzaker, Hugh Fraser, Bruce Alexander, Oscar Batterham, Matthew Spencer, James MacCallum, Stewart Clarke and Jot Davies. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Sandra Kemp.

The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. T. S. Eliot famously described THE MOONSTONE as 'the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels', but, as Sandra Kemp discusses in her introduction, it offers many other facets, which reveal Collins's sensibilities as untypical of his era.

(c) 1868, Wilkie Collins (P) 2019 Penguin Audio

 Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery Fiction
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I gave up with this - Wilkie Collins may have been a classic writer but in this particular book he badly needed an editor to cut and slash this right down! I knew the story but the frankly tedious, though well written narrative defeated me! No person would write their individual narratives in such detail - every passing thought recorded!! Where was the editor?! Returned it but if you have many hours of emptiness to fill go for it.

A tedious tedious classic

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One of the great detective stories of all time, so why on earth would you have an introduction that gives away the entire plot and the ending? Do yourself a favour and skip to the beginning of the book (Chapter 2) and then go back and listen to the introduction at the end.

Do not listen to the introduction

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Not quite as good as The Woman in White! But still an epic detective story! Definitely one of the greats. (Well it is the first!). Loved having the different narrators!

The difference narrators

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