Friday, November 27, 2020

Book Review - Eve Titus's Basil of Baker Street

Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus
Published by: Whittlesey House/ McGraw Hill
Publication Date: 1958
Format: Hardcover, 96 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Basil of Baker Street is a long lost book in that it's been subsumed in the wake of Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. I'm glad that everyone got to watch the adventures of Basil on the big screen, and no one could have been happier than my mother who audibly told me she was so glad to not have to see another My Little Pony or Care Bears film, I was only seven at the time and my brother was four, so those type of films were kind of our wheelhouse, but we got on board with Basil. It's not just that it's a clever reinterpretation of Sherlock Holmes for a younger audience, if you hunt up the books which were just re-released in a beautiful boxed set, you will see what a gifted author Eve Titus was. She was able to create a gripping mystery as well as a loving homage to Conan Doyle. This series combined the great literature loves that my mother instilled in me, a love of mysteries and a love of anthropomorphic animals. It's murder meets Wilbur and Charlotte! Though Charlotte's Web is already a little bleak... and the adding of murder would kind of skew it towards Animal Farm... but digression aside, these books are my jam. My mom and I spent hours pouring over the shelves in used bookstores trying to find all of Basil's adventures. I remember one time I was out and found a copy of Basil in Mexico at Half Price Books in one of those paperback boxed deals and when I got home my mom was beyond excited I'd found a missing Basil! Though ironically not Basil and the Lost Colony.

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