Charlotte Jay was born Geraldine Mary Jay in 1919 in Adelaide, where she died in 1996. She spent decades travelling, living and writing in England, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific, and worked as an oriental art dealer. She received international acclaim early, when her thriller Beat Not the Bones, published under the name Charlotte Jay, won the inaugural Edgar Allen Poe award of the Mystery Writers of America in 1952. As Charlotte Jay, she wrote numerous mystery novels set in exotic locales. She published straight novels as Geraldine Halls. The famous American critic Dorothy B. Hughes described her as 'one of the most important writers of far-off places and their mysterious qualities'.