The Moonstone

⚖The case for it

Collins gives his detective a passion for roses and a studied cool toward the theft, a pose crime writers would borrow for a century. It sprawls, and there are stretches where your thumb hovers over the next chapter. But the story reaches you through a stack of witnesses, each one seeing only the corner before them, so the pleasure is watching those partial views rub against each other. Gabriel Betteredge, who quotes Robinson Crusoe like scripture, is funnier than most novelists manage on purpose. This is where the method of the layered mystery gets built, and you get to watch it happen.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Victorian serial pacing means everything happens twice and gets discussed three times. Miss Clack's narration is a joke that runs forty pages past funny, the Indians are furniture from the imperial prop room, and the solution hinges on a contrivance you accept as period charm or you don't.

— the honest librarian