Charlotte JayCharlotte Jay was born in 1919 in Adelaide, Australia, where she operated an oriental art dealing business and continued to write until her death in 1996. Her mystery and suspense novels reflect a life spent travelling and her desire to 'frighten andmystify readers by asking them to identify themselves with a character bat- tling for survival in a lonely, claustrophobic situation'.She worked in 1949 for the Australian administration in Papua New Guinea, where she set Beat Not the Bones, for which she won the first Edgar Allan Poe award of the Mystery Writers' Association of America. The famous American critic Dorothy B. Hughes called her 'one of the most important writers of far-off places and their mysterious qualities'. Read More Read Less