# Digest urth.v022.n015 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 05 Jan 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Alice Turner *05 Jan 1999, 20:35* Stephen et al, > Michael Straight wrote : >> This sounds like it was inspired by a novel from the mid 1800's by Wilkie >> Collins called _The Moonstone_, which T.S. Eliot called "the first and >> greatest of English detective novels" (it introduced the idea of giving >> the reader all the clues necessary to solve the mystery and of having a >> "detective" to put it all together). It features chapters written by >> each of the witnesses to the crime. I don't know if they contradict each >> other, as, alas, I haven't read it yet. > A quick recommendation of _The Moonstone_. I love Wilke Collins' fiction > and perhaps this is the best of his novels, with a wonderful complex plot > and great characters (the detective Sgt. Cuff is great) and a marvelous > sense of place this is of interest to Wolfe fans. As far as I can recall > the Chapters written by various characters do not contradict each other > they move the plot on seamlessly and are only written by divers hands > because some of the narrators are not on hand to describe all of the > events. I too think -The Moonstone- holds up wonderfully well, especially considering what a pioneer it was, 1868, decades before the great adventure fiction of the end of the century. And I'll recommend -Incident of the Fingerpost- too, with one caveat: it is awfully long, and ones attention (mine, anyway) does tend to wander at times, so that it becomes a bit of a slog. But clever and atmospheric and amusing. -alga ---