The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

Utterly fantastic Victorian mystery melodrama. This set the template for the classic English detective novel: a cursed gem is stolen from a country house, a bumbling local bobby is soon displaced by a hyper-competent Scotland Yard man who must find the culprit from a range of suspicious types. All we know is that it can't be the one towards whom all the evidence points.

This is both great fun and serious literary ingenuity, particuarly in Collins's trademark use of multiple narrative perspectives.