Under the names Charlotte Armstrong and Jo Valentine she wrote 29 novels, as well as short stories, plays, and screenplays.
[2] She also worked for The New York Times' advertising department, as a fashion reporter for Breath of the Avenue (a buyer's guide), and in an accounting firm.
The long version was reprinted in the 1979 anthology, Mysterious Visions, by Martin H. Greenberg, Joseph Olander, and Charles G. Waugh.
"[6] In 1939, while living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Charlotte Armstrong began her career as a writer with the plays The Happiest Days and Ring Around Elizabeth.
Around the same time, fear of Communist influence in American institutions and the infiltration of Soviet spies started the McCarthy era.
In The Enemy, mob rule is prevalent as people ignored evidence, paralleling McCarthyism as it dominated politics at the time.
These elements of McCarthyism are also present in her 1951 novel Mischief, which was adapted into the film Don't Bother to Knock, directed by Roy Baker.
Three of her short stories, all published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, were nominated for Edgars: "And Already Lost" (1957), "The Case for Miss Peacock" (1965), and "The Splintered Monday" (1966).