Description
Book Synopsis''The first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels'' T S Eliot
When Rachel Verinder receives a gift of an astonishing yellow diamond from her bitter old uncle for her eighteenth birthday, she has no idea that the stone brings great danger with it. When the diamond goes missing during the night the ensuing investigations gradually bring to light the sinister history of the jewel and the passions and plots of those close to Rachel.
''Probably the very finest detective story ever written'' Dorothy L. Sayers
**AS DISCUSSED ON BBC2''S BETWEEN THE COVERS**
Trade ReviewPerfect for long, cold, winter evenings * The Times *
A whodunit about a lost jewel with several different narrators 'the first English detective story' is so ingenious, so melodramatically rational, so druggy and glittery and cleverly elusive, that it triumphs over all its impersonators * Observer *
A great, bold, theatrical mystery story which never falters, written with huge confidence and style -- Joanna Trollope
Wilkie Collins, along with Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens is generally acknowledged to be the great-great-grandfather of the modern mystery, but it's hard to think of many modern mysteries as skillfully shaped and psychologically keen as this one. The story flirts with the conventions of Victorian melodrama, but the characters that people it are truly vivid -- Elizabeth Kostova
No wonder 21st-century novelists are influenced by the great Victorian serial writers with their rip-roaring plots. A twisting detective thriller -- Joanna Briscoe * Independent *
