The Shadow Guests ¦ The Night of the Lemures

Ghosts of the long-gone past haunt both of these fairly ordinary novels, exerting a frightening influence on youth of the present. In the former the trigger is a combination of the highly-charged emotional state of Cosmo and a long-standing family curse. In the latter the boy's discovery of a roman sword is the more mundane device used to initiate events.

'May your firstborn son die in battle at an early age, and may his mother die of grief at his loss, and may this go on from generation to generation! is the curse which his cousin Eunice Doom reveals to Cosmo Curtoys when he arrives at the family home, after his flight from Australia, where his brother and mother have disappeared in The Bush. Four previous victims of the curse, visit Cosmo and as if this isn't enough to give him the collywobbles he's having a thoroughly miserable time at his new school.

The plot moves fairly smoothly despite lengthy discussions of time dimensions, which seem to punctuate all meal-time conversations with the learned Miss Doom. Lower Secondary boys might enjoy. it. The rather forbidding Marcus conjured up by Peter is a hang-over from the days of Boadicea. He is upset by Lemures, sort of nasty un-deads, intent on claiming more victims. Single-handed Peter is reduced to ancient pagan ritual in order to lay his roman friend's ghost and save his own skin. By the by
he also succeeds in rescuing the local baddy colonel from a larcenous bat-man. Not remarkable stuff, but probably worth a library copy for lower secondary.