The Moonstone by Wilkie Collings

I finished reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins this morning. I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. While the main couple were a bit dull, the characters who supplied the narrative were most amusing. It was nice to see such a diversity in writing styles within one book. The opium addicted doctor, the very pious Christian spinster and the old servant. Everyone seemed a little exaggerated but still were round enough characters that you could imagine their lives outside of the main plot of the book.

The story was fairly interesting, it often gets referred to as the first detective story, however, unlike most later stories, the detective first got it wrong, and only was able to sum it up, after other things had been revealed to him. It made for a more dramatic narrative and was a bit more believable than the Agatha Christie style "and here's how it happened" sort of conclusion. I thought the ending was very nice, the jewel ended up returning to where it belonged, after a separation of 800 years, and made thousands of people very happy. Which seemed very appropriate and nice.