The Moonstone (Collector's Library Classics)

Wilkie Collins, who's the author of The Moonstone, which is known as the first modern English detective novel, describes the whole thing as detective fever.

So it often reads, those listeners who've read The Moonstone ... the kind of sensation fiction of the mid19th century

those listeners who've read The Moonstone or The Woman in White in particular by Wilkie Collins

There's a character in in the novel the Moonstone by Wilkie Collins who carries around Robinson Crusoe with him everywhere and he says this is my Bible

That's about 20 years before the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. T.S. Eliot called The Moonstone the first, the longest, and the best detective story.

But for Marilyn, The Moonstone, about the theft of a cursed diamond, is first and best.

To lay down on the rocks a stick or any straight thing to guide my hand, exactly in the line of the beacon and the flagstaff. To take care in doing this that one end of the stick shall be at the edge of the rocks on the side of them which overlooks the quicksand. To feel along the stick among the seaweed To feel along the stick among the seaweed for the chain. To run my hand along the chain when found until I come to the part of it which stretches over the edge of the rocks down into the quicksand, and then to pull the chain.

I mean, that's really pretty good writing. That's... I always like the writing first. I don't care how great your story is, if you can't write it beautifully, then you ruin the story.

I remember thinking, why isn't it just obvious to the whole world that the Moonstone is just the best thing ever written and that it's the first detective story and Sergeant Cuff is the first detective? And long may he wave.