The book is regarded by some as the precursor of the modern mystery novel and the suspense novel. T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe,"[6] and Dorothy L. Sayers praised it as "probably the very finest detective story ever written".[7] G. K. Chesterton calls it "probably the best detective tale in the world".[8] Graham Greene argues that The Sign of Four is derived "a little too closely" from it.[9] It was published in 1868, later than Poe's short story mysteries "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) (which introduced the famous locked-room paradigm), "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1845). The plot also shows some parallels with The Hermitage (1839), an earlier murder mystery story by the English novelist Sarah Burney: for example, the return of a childhood companion, the sexual symbolism of defloration implied in the crime, and the almost catatonic reactions of the heroine to it.[10] However, The Moonstone introduced a number of the elements that became classic attributes of the twentieth-century detective story in novel form, as opposed to Poe's short story form. These include:
- an English country house robbery
- an "inside job"
- red herrings
- a celebrated, skilled, professional investigator
- a bungling local constabulary
- detective enquiries
- a large number of false suspects
- the "least likely suspect"
- a reconstruction of the crime
- a final twist in the plot.
Franklin Blake, the gifted amateur, is an early example of the gentleman detective. The highly competent Sergeant Cuff, the policeman called in from Scotland Yard (whom Collins based on the real-life Inspector Jonathan Whicher who solved the murder committed by Constance Kent),[11] is not a member of the gentry and is unable to break Rachel Verinder's reticence about what Cuff knows is an inside job. The Moonstone has also been described as perhaps the earliest police procedural, due to the portrayal of Cuff.[12] The social difference between Collins's two detectives is shown by their relationships with the Verinder family: Sergeant Cuff befriends Gabriel Betteredge, Lady Verinder's steward (chief servant), whereas Franklin Blake eventually marries her daughter Rachel.
A number of critics have suggested that Charles Felix (pseudonym for Charles Warren Adams), in his Notting Hill Mystery (1862–1863), first used techniques that came to define the genre.[13][14]
The Moonstone represents Collins's only complete reprisal of the popular "multi-narration" method that he had previously used to great effect in The Woman in White. The sections by Gabriel Betteredge (steward to the Verinder household) and Miss Clack (a poor relative and religious crank) offer both humour and pathos through their contrast with the testimony of other narrators, at the same time constructing and advancing the novel's plot.
The novel was Collins's last great success, coming at the end of an extraordinarily productive period in which four successive novels became bestsellers. After The Moonstone Collins wrote novels containing more overt social commentary that did not achieve the same audience.
A heavily fictionalised account of Collins's life while writing The Moonstone forms much of the plot of Dan Simmons's novel Drood (2009).[15]
