David Keaton

The Blue Buddha David Keaton

The Blue Buddha re-frames The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, as a contemporary story. This year is the sesquicentennial of that book's publication, which T. S. Elliot famously called "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels." The Blue Buddha preserves the spirit of Collins's tone, humor, and sense of eager expectancy, while bringing fresh relevance and enjoyment to the compelling mystery at the center of the story While the adaptation is meant to be enjoyed equally by fans of The Moonstone and those who may never have heard of Wilkie Collins, The Blue Buddha's plot does generally follow the action of The Moonstone. The location shifts from Victorian Yorkshire to the Hudson Highlands of today. The updated central characters echo their predecessors with vivid and plausible singularity. The eponymous and ominous jewel of both titles, a large flawed diamond in the original and the star sapphire of this version, carries a death curse. And from that intriguing premise deception, suicide, murder, romance, family secrets, and eventual felicitous resolutions emerge.