Soon after he graduated from college, Ardai was hired by hedge fund
D. E. Shaw. with a goal of hiring "people who really excel in one field or another." Sometime in the early 1990s,
Shaw tasked Ardai and
Jeff Bezos with coming up with potential online business ideas. While Ardai founded
Juno, an internet company, in 1996 with D. E. Shaw as an investor, In 1994, Ardai's short story "Nobody Wins," published in 1993 by
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, received a Shamus nomination for Best P.I. Short Story. 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. Ardai's third novel,
Fifty-to-One, was published in November 2008. 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. signing for
Gun Honey: Collision Course #1. Beside him is an advance copy of a reprint edition of the
Hard Case Crime novel
Lemons Never Lie, which had previously gone out of print. In 2010, Ardai began working as a writer and producer on the SyFy television series
Haven, inspired by the Hard Case Crime novel
The Colorado Kid by
Stephen King. The pilot episode of
Haven premiered on July 9, 2010 and the series finale premiered on December 17, 2015. In 2015, he received the
Ellery Queen Award for his work on Hard Case Crime. In 2016, he wrote a novel based on the
Shane Black movie
The Nice Guys. 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 escape prison, is chosen by the U.S. government to track him down and return him. and he has likened
Gun Honey to other espionage action thrillers that influenced it, such as
James Bond, as well as action/adventure stories featuring female protagonists, such as
Modesty Blaise,
Alias,
Kill Bill, 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 That miniseries premiered August 24, 2022. 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. The next installment in the series was the miniseries
Gun Honey: Collision Course, whose debut issue was released May 15, 2024. ==Awards and nominations==