Beat Not the Bones

by Charlotte Jay

Overview

Suicide or murder? Newly arrived in Papua, where even the luscious vegetation seems to conspire with the bureaucrats to bewilder her, Stella Warwick is determined to prove her husband did not take his own life. Defying the patronising concern of officials, she ventures deep into the jungle, striding ever closer to the horrifying heart of the mystery

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781862542877
Publisher:	Wakefield Press, WA
Publication date:	01/18/2024
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Charlotte 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 and mystify 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 an Excerpt

People changed; they were no longer recognisable as Australians. Frustrations and misfortunes festered into wounds here, deranged the mind and poisoned the blood.

Editorial Reviews

In this novel, a naive young girl travels to Papua New Guinea from Australia, determined to discover the truth about her late husband's death: Was it suicide or murder? The story fleshes out its characters: a sheltered girl on the verge of womanhood, father figures with unfatherly intentions, and men and women on the brink of nervous breakdowns. Geraldine Halls, writing here as Jay, has fused these elements into a suspenseful tale of terror. A world-traveling native of Australia, she spent several years working in Papua New Guinea, an experience that enabled her to landscape her story with an authentic tropical background and to create convincing anticolonial literature through her sensitive characterization of both the white administration and the native population. The work is enhanced by Australian narrator Paula Gardner, an actress who brings alive the feverish passions that fester in the New Guinea heat. Highly recommended for all popular fiction collections.--Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, NY

Library Journal

This might easily scare you out of your wits. Extremely well-handled mystery, authentic horror and atmosphere that closes in like jungle heat.

Chronicle San Francisco

Charlotte Jay works you up to the revelation of a horrible secret, and the secret turns out to be the horrible surprise you hoped it would be.

New York Times Book Review

As to the beautifully deft plot [Beat Not the Bones] I can best quote Charlotte Armstrong's,: "she pulls off something that so often fails -- wisking us to a revelation of a horrible secret and the secret turns out to be the horrible surprise you had hoped it would be. Her subtle picture of the interaction of an "advanced" and a primitive race is exquisitely detailed." -- New York Times Book Review

Anthony Boucher