Charles Ardai | |
---|---|
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Occupations |
|
Employer | D. E. Shaw & Co. |
Notable work | Juno Online Services Hard Case Crime |
Charles Ardai is an American businessman, and writer of crime fiction and mysteries. He is co-founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of pulp-style paperback crime novels. He is also an early employee of D. E. Shaw & Co. and remains a managing director of the firm. [1] [2] He is the former chairman of Schrödinger, Inc. [2]
A New York native and the son of two Holocaust survivors, Ardai told NPR 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. [3]
While in high school, Ardai enjoyed reading pulp fiction and worked as an intern at Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. [4]
After graduating from Hunter College High School in 1987, he attended Columbia University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1991. [5]
Right out of college, Ardai was hired by hedge fund D. E. Shaw. [4] His first job at the firm was to set up its recruiting department, with a goal of hiring "people who really excel in one field or another." [6]
Sometime in the early 1990s, Shaw tasked Ardai and Jeff Bezos with coming up with potential online business ideas. [7] While Ardai founded Juno, an internet company, in 1996 with D. E. Shaw as an investor, [4] [8] [9] Bezos went on to found Amazon.com on his own. [7] After Juno was sold in 2001, Ardai and Max Phillips decided to start a publishing company to publish crime fiction in the pulp magazine style they grew up enjoying. That proposed company became Hard Case Crime, which published its first books in 2004. [10] Hard Case's comics imprint were produced by Dorchester Publishing and Ardai's Winterfall, LLC between 2004 and 2010. [11]
Ardai's writing has appeared in mystery magazines such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, gaming magazines such as Computer Gaming World and Electronic Games , and anthologies such as Best Mysteries of the Year and The Year's Best Horror Stories . Ardai has also edited numerous short story collections such as The Return of the Black Widowers , Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre, and Futurecrime. [12]
In 1994, Ardai's short story "Nobody Wins," published in 1993 by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, received a Shamus nomination for Best P.I. Short Story. [13]
His first novel, Little Girl Lost (2004) was nominated for both the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America. [14] His second novel, Songs of Innocence, was called "an instant classic" by The Washington Post , [15] selected as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly , [16] and won the 2008 Shamus Award. [17] Both books were written under the alias Richard Aleas and were optioned for the movies by Universal Pictures. [18]
He received the Edgar Award in 2007 for the short story "The Home Front". [19] Ardai's third novel, Fifty-to-One, was published in November 2008. [20] It was the fiftieth book in the Hard 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. [21]
In 2010, Ardai began working as a writer and producer on the SyFy television series Haven, [22] inspired by the Hard Case Crime novel The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. [23] The pilot episode of Haven premiered on July 9, 2010 [24] and the series finale premiered on December 17, 2015. [25]
In 2011, Titan Comics became the publisher of Hard Case's comics. [11]
As of 2013, Ardai was serving as D. E. Shaw's recruiting chief. [26] As of 2016, he was its Managing Director. [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 the Shane Black movie The Nice Guys . [29]
On September 22, 2021, Titan Comics released under the Hard Case Crime imprint Gun Honey #1, Ardai's first written work for the comics medium. The book, which is drawn by Ang Hor Kheng, and features covers by Bill Sienkiewicz, Robert McGinnis, and Adam Hughes, centers upon weapons smuggler Joanna Tan, who after helping a convict out of prison, is chosen by the U.S. government to track him down and return him. [11] The four-issue miniseries was conceived by Ardai when he conceived of Hard Case Crime Comics five years prior, [30] and he has likened Gun Honey to other espionage action thrillers that influenced it, such as James Bond, [31] as well as action/adventure stories featuring female protagonists, such as Modesty Blaise, Alias , Kill Bill , [30] and Barbarella . [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 miniseries Gun Honey: Collision Course, whose debut issue was released May 15, 2024. [36]
† Written under pseudonym "Richard Aleas."
Ardai is married to writer Naomi Novik. As of 2006, they live on Manhattan's Upper East Side. [37]
The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder, is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
Harlan Coben is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists. Twelve of his novels have been adapted for film and television.
Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.
William Campbell Gault (1910–1995) was an American writer. He wrote under his own name, and as Roney Scott and Will Duke, among other pseudonyms.
Laura Lippman is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels. Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.
Linda Barnes is an American mystery writer.
Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He is known for a series of crime novels featuring the investigator Amos Walker.
Warren Burton Murphy was an American author, best known as the co-creator of The Destroyer series, the basis for the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
John Thomas Lutz was an American writer who mainly wrote mystery novels.
Hard Case Crime is an American imprint of hardboiled crime novels founded in 2004 by Charles Ardai and Max Phillips. The series recreates, in editorial form and content, the flavor of the paperback crime novels of the 1940s and '50s. The covers feature original illustrations done in a style that was common for paperbacks of that era, credited to artists such as Robert McGinnis and Glen Orbik.
Ken Bruen is an Irish writer of hardboiled and noir crime fiction.
James Mullaney is an American writer. Mullaney was ghostwriter and later credited writer of 28 novels in The Destroyer paperback-novel series. He is currently the author of The Red Menace novel series as well as the Crag Banyon Mysteries series.
William Murray is an American novelist, journalist, short story, and comic book writer. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms. With artist Steve Ditko, he co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl.
Bill Pronzini is an American writer of detective fiction. He is also an active anthologist, having compiled more than 100 collections, most of which focus on mystery, western, and science fiction short stories. Pronzini is known as the creator of the San Francisco-based Nameless Detective, who starred in over 40 books from the early 1970s into the 2000s.
Nancy Pickard is an American crime novelist. She has won five Macavity Awards, four Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, and a Shamus Award. She is the only author to win all four awards. She also served on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America. She received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and began writing when she was 35 years old.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Michael Wiley writes the Shamus Award-nominated Franky Dast mysteries, the Shamus Award-nominated Sam Kelson Chicago PI mystery series, the Daniel Turner thrillers, and the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski hard-boiled detective mystery series.
Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
David Housewright is an Edgar Award-winning author of crime fiction and past President of the Private Eye Writers of America best known for his Holland Taylor and Rushmore McKenzie detective novels. Housewright won the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America as well as a nomination from the PWA for his first novel "Penance." He has also earned three Minnesota Book Awards. Most of his novels take place in and around the greater St. Paul and Minneapolis area of Minnesota, USA and have been favorably compared to Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Robert B. Parker.
Alison L. Gaylin is an American author of mystery and thriller novels. She has won a Shamus Award (2013) and Edgar Award (2019), and has been a finalist for many other awards.
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.