Wilkie Collins – The Moonstone

I am on something of a mystery-suspense-investigatey roll at the moment; so might as well go straight to the source: the Grandaddy of All Detective Fiction, the Godfather of All The Genre. Also, extreme enjoyment potential beckons, because, blimey, did I ever love The Woman in White last summer.

So, go Victorian melodrama go! First we are in India, where a bad and evil dude has stolen the priceless and sacred Moonstone in a theiving colonial way and has carried it off to Blighty. Unfortunately, the precious jewel comes complete with three relentless Diamond-worshippers who will STOP AT NOTHING to get it back (which is obviously meant to be scarey, but at the same time, you are a bit like….well, it is theirs, and it was stolen from them in a murderous rampage, so fair enough.) In a final act of random revenge, the evil colonel bequeaths it to his innocent and beautiful niece. Then – this is not a spoiler because otherwise there would be no story – the Moonstone is stolen again. And then the rest of the book is whodunnit. Very Elaborate and Long-Winded whodunnit.

This being the Victorian times part one: you have to get past all the references to anyone who isn’t white being automatically suspicious, and all women being flaky and without principles. Wilkie does manage to break free of his cliches long enough to have an ominous looking character turn out to be a hero, which was a minor triumph of stereotype-smashing.

This being the Victorian times part two: there are lots of cousins falling in love with each other. We have to accept this as part of the Victorian deal rather than just thinking, ick.

One thing that does irritate me – this is not a Collins-specific complaint, but a general genre-flaw – is when a character says: ‘the only thing I could do was….’ and your immediate thought is – no it wasn’t. Then your brain spends five minutes thinking of other things they couldn’t have done, while your eyes continue to automatically read. Now, not only are you irritated with the character, you also have missed out important plot points.

It is most distracting.

This was not as absorbing and addictive as The Woman in White, but they are different kettles of mystery-fish. The plot skated too close to utterly absurd in places, rather than being purely heart-stopping, can’t-wait-to-find-out what happens next. I managed to put it down thirty pages before the end, just after a supposedly massive cliff-hanger, which shows that it didn’t completely monopolise my attention.

Also, there are no characters who are quite as crazy-awesome as Count Fosco or Marion. Sergeant Cuff is okay, I guess, though he is not does not quite Define the Detective For-Evermore, in the way that I was expecting. My favourite character was by far the kind-hearted, Robinson-Crusoe-obsessed butler.

Still, kind of fun and a good start to the summer-reading.

Now that I have done the big blockbuster Collins, can someone tell me whether the other mini-Collins’s are worth a go?