The Great Mouse Detective 8 – Basil and the Library Ghost

Basil and the Library Ghost by Eve Titus and Cathy Hapka is the eighth Great Mouse Detective story, a whodunnit for 8 year olds set in a college inside the walls of Oxford.

What happens

Basil is a mouse. He's also the most famous detective in mousedom, and he got that way by hiding in the walls at 221B Baker Street and listening to Sherlock Holmes explain his cases.

The mice built a whole town in the cellar under that house so Basil could pop upstairs whenever he liked.

This time he and Doctor Dawson are on a train to Oxford for a college reunion. Basil doesn't want to go. The morning paper says his old enemy Ratigan has broken out of prison, and he'd much rather be hunting him.

A young mouse called Alfie appears from behind a suitcase on the luggage rack, thrilled to meet the great detective. He asks an awful lot of questions about where they're going and who they're seeing. Then, at the station, he's simply gone.

At the college the old friends are waiting with cheese and news. The library is haunted.

Statues chipped. Books moved in the night. Books vanishing altogether. Cold draughts where no window is open. Everyone says it's the ghost of a long-dead librarian called Whiskers the Wise, who swore he'd never leave.

Basil says ghosts don't exist and that vandalism is a serious matter, and then a bookcase comes down on the head librarian, who throws himself clear just in time.

The detecting is proper detecting, which is lovely. Basil examines the fallen shelf and is disappointed to find no dust on it, because dust would have held pawprints, which he explains work just like fingerprints.

Here's the thing to know before you pick it up. Doctor Dawson tells the story, and he talks like a Victorian gentleman. Halcyon days. Bucolic. Hallowed halls. There's a lot of cheese and a lot of chuckling and the sentences are long.

That makes it a gorgeous read-aloud, with plenty of voices to do. As a solo read, a child working hard at their reading may get stuck on the vocabulary rather than the mystery. It's worth deciding which of those you're buying into.

Nothing frightening happens in the opening chapters, by the way. The ghost talk is all cosy shivers and Basil is dismissive of it from the start.

What to read next

If Basil wins them over, there's Basil and the Royal Dare, where an urgent summons arrives from the royal mice of Marlborough House and he drops everything to answer it.