Basil Universe

Beneath the floorboards of 221B Baker Street, in a mouse-sized flat called Holmestead, lives Basil of Baker Street — a mouse who learned his craft by listening at Sherlock Holmes's feet and now takes cases of his own, with the loyal Dr. David Q. Dawson to write them up. Eve Titus set the pattern in 1958 and Paul Galdone drew it: a deerstalker on a mouse, a villain called Ratigan, and mysteries that carry the little detective from a lost colony of mice to the land of the Pygmy Cats, to Mexico and out to the Wild West. Titus wrote five slim books between 1958 and 1982; Cathy Hapka took the detective up again in 2018 for three more — a cheese cook-off, a royal dare and a library ghost. The 1986 Disney film The Great Mouse Detective gave the series its later name, and the catalogue keeps the storybook of the film, which shares Basil and Ratigan with the books and little else. These are early chapter books — quick, cheerful pastiches that reward a child who has just met Holmes, or a parent who has. Read Titus's five in the order she wrote them, starting with Basil of Baker Street, and take Hapka's continuations as what they are: a fond return, best after the originals.