Born in the Bronx, Lardo attended the former Evander Childs High School, followed by the City College of New York.
[2] In 1998, he retired and relocated from Manhattan to his second home in Amagansett with his partner, Bob Evans, who died a year later.
[2] He has said that his first novel, a "mainstream" mystery, was rejected by publishers, until he decided to change the plot, removing the protagonist's wife, and giving him a gay son.
Eventually six of Lardo's McNally novels reached The New York Times Best Seller list.
Following publication of the first novel, class-action suits against the publisher were brought by McNally fans who contended that they had been deceived as to the new authorship: in the hardcover version Lardo's name had been printed in small type on the copyright page.