The Great Mouse Detective 7 – Basil and the Royal Dare

Basil and the Royal Dare by Eve Titus and Cathy Hapka is the seventh Great Mouse Detective book, a Victorian mystery for 7 year olds about seven missing teenagers, all of them mice.

What happens

Basil is the mouse detective who learned his trade by hiding in the walls of 221B Baker Street and listening to Sherlock Holmes. His friend Dr Dawson tells the stories, and Dawson is easily the best thing in them.

This one opens with Basil in a sulk. Holmes has gone off to the Continent, there is no case, and he is pushing a lump of Camembert round a plate.

Then a very well-dressed mouse bursts into the cheese shop. He has come from Marlborough House, where the mouse royals live alongside the human ones, and he needs Basil now.

Seven teenagers have disappeared. They had been daring each other to do sillier and sillier things, most of them involving Pes, a dog belonging to the visiting Bohemian party. Pes has been trained to hunt and kill mice, because the human boy who owns him is terrified of them.

Basil takes one look at the dog and announces that the children are alive, then explains exactly how he knows. It is real deduction, laid out clearly enough that a young reader can follow the reasoning instead of just admiring it.

The pleasure of these is Dawson. He is a doctor, thank you very much, not a sidekick, and he would quite like somebody to notice. He is also the one who walks into a room, sees an enormous cat with its jaws wide open and croaks "Run!", while Basil strolls straight past explaining that Cecil is far too lazy to bother with them.

A note on the register. The sentences are longer and older than a mouse detective story might lead you to expect. Dawson says détente and blasé and proprietress, and he is a grown mouse telling a grown-up sort of story. There is real menace too, with a dog trained to kill the characters snapping at them through a hole in the wall. A newer reader will get on better with it read aloud.

What to read next

Basil and the Big Cheese Cook-Off comes earlier in the series, so it is the gentler place to start. Basil is called to Paris, where somebody has been sending threats to the organisers of an international cheese competition, and Dawson is very pleased indeed about the catering.