Mystery · Detective
The Moonstone
A sacred Indian diamond vanishes from a country house on the night of a birthday party.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A diamond and a birthday
In 1799, at the storming of Seringapatam in India, an English officer seizes a sacred yellow diamond, the Moonstone, and kills to get it. Half a century later he leaves it in his will to his niece, Rachel Verinder, as an eighteenth-birthday present. Her cousin Franklin Blake brings it to her country house in Yorkshire. Three Indian men have been seen near the house. On the night of the party Rachel puts the diamond in a cabinet in her sitting room; in the morning it’s gone. Wilkie Collins published the novel in 1868, and it is often called the first full-length detective novel in English.
Why it works for learners
The story is told by a series of witnesses, each writing their own part, and each has a strong, distinct voice. The old house steward, Gabriel Betteredge, who consults Robinson Crusoe the way other people consult the Bible, is one of the great comic narrators. Later come a sanctimonious spinster, a lawyer and Franklin Blake himself. Switching voices is excellent practice: formal and informal styles, humor and pomposity, all without leaving the story. The detective, Sergeant Cuff, with his passion for roses, became a model for many who followed.
Which level to start at
B1 for the mystery; B2 if you want the comedy of the different narrators, which is the book’s great pleasure. C1 keeps Collins’s voices with the longest passages condensed. Lexo narrates with different voices for different characters, which suits a book built from witnesses.
Read next
- The Woman in White, Collins’s other great mystery
- The Sign of the Four, Holmes and another treasure from India
- Robinson Crusoe, Betteredge’s favorite book