The legendary Moonstone diamond is presented to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. Looted by Rachel s uncle from an Indian temple, it is said to carry a curse. Staked out in the grounds surrounding Rachel's country house, a band of Hindu Brahmins watch and wait for an opportunity to restore the Moonstone to its rightful place. When the gem disappears overnight, suspicion falls upon the Brahmins, but then Inspector Cuff of Scotland Yard arrives and begins to unwrap a mystery as fascinating as it is complex. T.S. Eliot declared The Moonstone (1868) 'the first and greatest of English detective novels'.