Wilkie Collins's writing style varies greatly in The Moonstone depending on which narrator the reader is encountering. In general, however, the style of the novel's writing is forthright, intense, and emotional, which belies the complexity of Collins's intensely tangled plots. Collins's novels (especially this one) are known for "traps" and red herrings intended to mislead a reader, and for intricate and intellectually stimulating puzzles and tricks. His figurative language provides a highly detailed and intense landscape for the reader to explore, as he engages with the psychological struggles of complicated characters. He depicts moral issues in a nuanced and thorough way through a variety of perspectives, and peppers the book with romantic and occasionally poetic descriptions of treasure, romance, and the English countryside. The novel's relationship with time is interestingly inconsistent, as some sections "come from" the distant past, and the end of the novel is narrated from a future beyond the events of its central plot.
The novel appeals directly to the senses with dense imagery and long descriptive passages, especially about the appearances of characters and scenery. The pace of the novel is fast and unrelenting, as is typical of a book published as a serial in the genre of Sensational Fiction. The author incorporates a wide variety of other genres of writing in the book, which also dictate its style. It's an epistolary novel, so much of it takes the form of letters; but it also contains legal transcripts, interviews, and "found" documents.
Collins often directly addresses the reader through his narrators in these "letters," underlining his novel's satirical elements and social commentary. For example, Miss Clack's pious, self-interested moralizing often takes on the imperative second person, as Collins lampoons the hypocrisy and invasiveness of her religious practices. Collins also draws out the mystery of the theft of the Moonstone diamond through complex and allusive references and complicated syntax. There are moments where the writing is stylistically very simple, as in Rosanna's suicide note to Franklin Blake, but that simplicity has an underlying complexity. Collins never tells the reader anything all at once, even as he seems to be laying everything out clearly.
