Ardai, Charles 1969–

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Ardai, Charles 1969–

(Richard Aleas)

PERSONAL:

Surname is pronounced "ar-dye"; born October 25, 1969, in New York, NY; son of Tibor (a photographer) and Vera Ardai. Education: Columbia University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1991.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Office—D.E. Shaw and Co., 120 West 45th St., New York, NY 10036.

CAREER:

Davis Publications, New York City, editor of special projects, 1986-91; D.E. Shaw and Co., New York City, director of strategic growth, 1992-2001, managing director of technology development, 2001—; cocreator, Hard Case Crime, 2001—; writer. Story consultant, Lewis Chesler Productions and Limelight Productions.

MEMBER:

Mystery Writers of America, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Shamus Award nomination, 1993, for short story "Nobody Wins"; Edgar Allan Poe award for best short story, 2007, for "The Home Front."

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Sheila Williams) Why I Left Harry's All Night Hamburgers and Other Stories (for children), Delacorte (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre, Galahad Books (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) Great Tales of Crime and Detection, Galahad Books (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor, with Cynthia Manson) Futurecrime: An Anthology of the Shape of Crime to Come, Donald I. Fine (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor, with Cynthia Manson) Kingpins: Tales from inside the Mob, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 1992.

New England Crime Chowder, International Polygonics (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with Cynthia Mason) Aliens and UFOs: Extra-terrestrial Tales from Asimov's Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Smithmark (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor and contributor) Isaac Asimov, The Return of the Black Widowers, Carroll & Graf Publishers (New York, NY), 2003.

(Under pseudonym Richard Aleas) Little Girl Lost, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2004.

(Under pseudonym Richard Aleas) Songs of Innocence, Dorchester (New York, NY), 2007.

Work represented in anthologies, including The Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, DAW Books, 1991, and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year, Dercum, 1992. Contributor of stories and articles to magazines and newspapers, including Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery, Ellery Queen's Mystery, Video, Computer Entertainment, and Quarto.

SIDELIGHTS:

"As a teenager living in New York City," according to the author's profile on the Columbia College Web site, "Charles Ardai … became immersed in the world of pulp mystery fiction, hardboiled crime novels popularized in the 1950s with their provocative covers and mass entertainment appeal." Although he has worked since 1992 for D.E. Shaw and Co. (most recently in the capacity of managing director of technology development), whose accomplishments include the creation of the Internet service provider Juno, Ardai is best known for his contributions to the mystery genre. He has expressed his devotion to the genre by writing and editing a variety of volumes and, in 2001, cocreating the reprint publishing house Hard Case Crime.

Hard Case Crime was the venue for Ardai's first venture into the territory of the crime novel after having written award-winning short stories for decades. Writing under the pseudonym Richard Aleas (an anagram of his name), Ardai has composed two novels featuring detective John Blake: Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence. The first story opens with Blake discovering that his highschool sweetheart Miranda Sugarman has been murdered on the roof of a Manhattan strip joint. Blake is shocked, not only by the violent death of the girl he once knew and loved, but also by the fact that she ap- parently went on to a career as a stripper rather than following her dream to become a doctor. "Blake is compelled to investigate what had happened to her during the intervening years," wrote Hagen Baye in Mostly Fiction, "and who was responsible for her death." "The key to this tale," declared Harriet Klausner in Best Reviews, "is the delightful cast (with and without clothing) in which even the miscreants have personalities, albeit nasty ones." "Tightly written from start to finish," concluded a Publishers Weekly contributor, "this crime novel is as satisfyingly edgy as the pulp classics that inspired it."

Songs of Innocence picks up Blake's story some three years later, when he has given up his career as a private investigator and has turned to a career teaching part-time at Columbia University. "While there, he meets beautiful student Dorothy ‘Dorrie’ Burke, who has talent and looks (‘She was beautiful in a way you're accustomed to seeing on movie posters, or the pages in a magazine, but not in real life’)," explained January reviewer Anthony Rainone. "Dorrie has a difficult past, which she unburdens onto Blake, who likewise divests himself of some of his own inner torments." When Dorrie is discovered dead in her bathtub, an apparent suicide, the girl's mother calls on Blake to investigate. "As he finds one dead end after another, scouring New York's sex trade and becoming a fugitive from the law," Seth Harwood wrote in Thrilling Detective, "Blake gets closer and closer to the one thing he can't bear to find: that Dorrie may have committed suicide after all, for a reason she may have never wanted him to know, and one he may in fact never know." "This second novel of Aleas/Ardai," concluded Mostly Fiction reviewer Hayden Baye, "is equally worthy of praise as his first."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 2003, Elliott Swanson, review of The Return of the Black Widowers, p. 393; June 1, 2007, Keir Graff, review of Songs of Innocence, p. 47.

January, September, 2007, Anthony Rainone, "Siren Songs."

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2003, review of The Return of the Black Widowers, p. 1294.

Library Journal, November 1, 2004, Michael Rogers, review of Little Girl Lost, p. 134; June 15, 2007, Rollie Welch, review of Songs of Innocence, p. 63.

Publishers Weekly, June 8, 1992, review of Kingpins: Tales from inside the Mob, p. 57; November 3, 2003, review of The Return of the Black Widowers, p. 57; October 25, 2004, review of Little Girl Lost, p. 33; May 21, 2007, review of Songs of Innocence, p. 41.