Charles and James Latimer Books

Sally and Jeremy Latimer are pleased, if somewhat puzzled, when two gentlemen with decidedly old-world manners choose to befriend them when their car mysteriously breaks down in the small French village of St. Denissur-Aisne while on holiday one fine day in 1953. What they don't know is that the two men, James and Charles Latimer, are ancestors of theirs. The two shuffled off this mortal coil some 80 years earlier when, emboldened by strong drink and with only a pet monkey and an aged waiter as allies, the two made a valiant, foolish and quite fatal attempt to halt a German advance during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Now, these two ectoplasmic gentlemen and their spectral pet monkey Ulysses have been summoned from their final resting place in an unmarked grave because their visiting relatives are in serious trouble. But before they can solve the younger Latimers' problems, the three benevolent spirits light brief candles of insanity for a tipsy policeman, a recalcitrant banker, a convocation of English ghost-busters, and a card-playing rogue who's wanted for murder.

Emboldened by strong drink, tourists James and Charles Latimer met an untimely end while foolishly trying to stop a German advance during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and were put to their not-so-eternal rest in a cemetery in a small French village. But whenever a relative is in trouble, these two benevolent spooks rise from the grave to use their unique talents to right wrongs. This time it's 1954 and they're off to Lake Como in Italy where Uncle Quentin finds his confirmed bachelor status is in serious danger from an eager widow who just won't take no for an answer. Along the way, they learn how to drive - more or less - an automobile, outwit a couple of bank robbers, stage an old-fashioned duel, and solve a murder with a little help from the victim, a fellow ghost. Accompanying them on the journey is their pet monkey. Ulysses, whose love for wine and adventure wreaks havoc on a small French garrison town when he helps free a bevy of circus animals, including an educated elephant who feels the show must go on.

Young Richard Scroby didn't intend to make a fuss when the burglar broke into his apartment. After all, that's why he kept a very competent manservant about. But Wilkins was out of town and Richard was a little the worse for drink so when he spotted the crook at his window, he picked up a perfectly awful vase -- a gift from his very formidable Aunt Angela -- and sent this second-story man crashing to the pavement. After which he promptly went to bed. He was more than a bit perturbed when the police came calling quite early that morning to ask about the man in the street. To Aunt Angela this escapade was the last straw and she announced that it was time she found Richard a wife, at which point Richard flees to Paris with his aunt in pursuit and meets up with the confederates of the incarcerated burglar. Which is why two gentlemanly spirits, James and Charles Latimer, who were killed some eighty years earlier, are back again among the quick. Whenever a relative is in danger these two are allowed to return to the world of the living. Coming along for the ride is their pet monkey Ulysses, whose love of claret spells trouble for a troupe of scantily clad trapeze artists. First published in 1958, this is the third and final book featuring the ghostly Latimers,