Charles Ardai | |
|---|---|
 Ardai at aMidtown Comics signing in Manhattan | |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Occupations |
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| Employer | D. E. Shaw & Co. |
| Notable work | Juno Online Services Hard Case Crime |
| Awards | Edgar Award (2007) Shamus Award (2008) Ellery Queen Award (2015) Inkpot Award (2024) |
Charles Ardai is an American businessman, and writer of crime fiction and mysteries. He is co-founder and editor ofHard Case Crime, a line of pulp-style paperback crime novels. He was also an early employee ofD. E. Shaw & Co. and a managing director of the firm.[1][2] He is the former chairman ofSchrödinger, Inc.[2][3]
A New York native and the son of twoHolocaust survivors, Ardai toldNPR in a May 2008 interview that the stories his parents told him as a child "were the most grim and frightening that you can imagine" and gave him the impression "there was a darker circle around a very small bit of light," something that enabled him to relate to his own characters' sufferings.[4]
While in high school, Ardai enjoyed readingpulp fiction and worked as an intern atIsaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.[5]
After graduating fromHunter College High School in 1987, he attendedColumbia University, where he graduatedsumma cum laude in 1991.[6]
Soon after he graduated from college, Ardai was hired by hedge fundD. E. Shaw.[5] His first job at the firm was to set up its recruiting department,[7] with a goal of hiring "people who really excel in one field or another."[8]
Sometime in the early 1990s,Shaw tasked Ardai andJeff Bezos with coming up with potential online business ideas.[9] While Ardai foundedJuno, an internet company, in 1996 with D. E. Shaw as an investor,[5][10][11] Bezos went on to foundAmazon.com on his own.[9] After Juno was sold in 2001, Ardai and Max Phillips decided to start a publishing company to publish crime fiction in thepulp magazine style they grew up enjoying. That proposed company becameHard Case Crime, which published its first books in 2004.[12] Hard Case's books were produced by Dorchester Publishing and Ardai's Winterfall, LLC between 2004 and 2010 and have been produced by Titan Books and Winterfall since 2011 (together with a relatedcomics imprint launched in 2016).[13]
Ardai's writing has appeared in mystery magazines such asEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine andAlfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, gaming magazines such asComputer Gaming World andElectronic Games, and anthologies such asBest Mysteries of the Year andThe Year's Best Horror Stories. Ardai has also edited numerous short story collections such asThe Return of the Black Widowers,Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre, andFuturecrime.[14]
In 1994, Ardai's short story "Nobody Wins," published in 1993 byAlfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, received a Shamus nomination for Best P.I. Short Story.[15]
His first novel,Little Girl Lost (2004) was nominated for both theEdgar Allan Poe Award by theMystery Writers of America and theShamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.[16] His second novel,Songs of Innocence, was called "an instant classic" byThe Washington Post,[17] selected as one of the best books of the year byPublishers Weekly,[18] and won the 2008 Shamus Award.[19] Both books were written under the alias Richard Aleas and were optioned for the movies by Universal Pictures.[20]
He received theEdgar Award in 2007 for the short story "The Home Front".[21] Ardai's third novel,Fifty-to-One, was published in November 2008.[22] It was the fiftieth book in theHard Case Crime series and the first to be published under Ardai's real name.
His fourth novel,Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear, is part of a pulp adventure series he created in 2009, describing the globetrotting exploits of a modern-day explorer named Gabriel Hunt. Authorship of all the books in this series were originally credited to Gabriel Hunt himself.[23]
In 2010, Ardai began working as a writer and producer on the SyFy television seriesHaven,[24] inspired by the Hard Case Crime novelThe Colorado Kid byStephen King.[25] The pilot episode ofHaven premiered on July 9, 2010[26] and the series finale premiered on December 17, 2015.[27]
In 2015, he received the Ellery Queen Award for his work on Hard Case Crime.[28]
In 2016, he wrote a novel based on theShane Black movieThe Nice Guys.[29]
On September 22, 2021, Titan Comics released under the Hard Case Crime imprintGun Honey #1, Ardai's first written work for the comics medium. The book, which is drawn by Ang Hor Kheng, and features covers byBill Sienkiewicz,Robert McGinnis, andAdam Hughes, centers upon weapons smuggler Joanna Tan, who after helping a convict escape prison, is chosen by the U.S. government to track him down and return him.[13] The four-issue miniseries was conceived by Ardai when he conceived of Hard Case Crime Comics five years prior,[30] and he has likenedGun Honey to other espionage action thrillers that influenced it, such asJames Bond,[31] as well as action/adventure stories featuring female protagonists, such asModesty Blaise,Alias,Kill Bill,[30] andBarbarella.[31] At the review aggregator website Comic Book Roundup, the debut issue has a rating of 8 out of 10, based on eight critics' reviews.[32] The story was followed by a sequel,Gun Honey: Blood for Blood, in which Joanna and her ally, a government agent named Brook Barrow, are framed for murder[31] by a vengeful rival of Joanna's.[33] That miniseries premiered August 24, 2022.[34] It was followed by a four-issue spinoff series,Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series, also written by Ardai, with art by Ace Continuado, Jose Zapata, and Asifur Rahman. The book, whose debut issue was released on June 28, 2023, sees Tan going on the run after she is targeted for assassination by the U.S. government. Pursued by a beautiful sociopathic hitwoman named Sarah Claride, Tan seeks help from her friend, stage magician and illusionist Dahlia Racers, who specializes in helping people disappear.[31][35] The next installment in the series was the miniseriesGun Honey: Collision Course, whose debut issue was released May 15, 2024.[36]
† Written under pseudonym "Richard Aleas."
Ardai is married to writerNaomi Novik. As of 2006, they live onManhattan's Upper East Side.[37]
after college Ardai landed a coveted job as an investment banker at the D.E. Shaw group. In 1994, Ardai dreamed up what became the Internet provider Juno. When Juno was sold in 2001, Ardai and Phillips, the company's art director...discovered their shared passion for midcentury pulp
Soon after the 22-year-old joined, he was tasked with setting up Shaw's recruiting department. We've filled the company with everything from a chess master, to published writers, to stand-up comedians — people who really excel in one field or another
Max Phillips and I came up with the idea of Hard Case Crime in the winter of 2001. We had worked together on an Internet company called Juno and it had just sold that fall.
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