'The Moonstone', a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. 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. AUTHOR: "Make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em wait exactly in that order." William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was the leading sensational novelist of the Victorian era, and during the 1860s his novels, published in weekly instalments, and unequalled the popularity of the works of his friend Charles Dickens. With 'The Woman in White' and 'The Moonstone', he is credited with the creation of the detective story.