A writer was born in the city of Malden, Massachusetts, graduated from the Palo Alto High School in 1909 and entered the Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana; passed the examination of the state commission for the title of lawyer in 1911. In 1917 Gardner opens an attorney's office in Merced, California. A few years later, he moved to work in a sales agency, and five years later, in 1921, he opened a law firm, Sheridan, Orr, Drapo and Gardner, in Ventura, California. Gardner is gaining popularity with vivid presentations at court trials until 1933, but after the release of his first detective novel "The Case of Velvet Claws," it is decided to devote himself to the literature entirely. Gardner in 1946 founded and until the 1960s was one of the members of the committee "The Court of Last Hope," a human rights organization to review the death sentences. For a documentary about this organization, he was awarded the Edgar Poe Award of the American Association of Detective Writers in 1962 in the Grand Master nomination. Gardner also deserves to attract public attention (by publishing an article in the magazine "Life" in 1962) to the rock carvings of Lower California, some of which were later listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In addition, in 1968, together with Charles Hapgood, Gardner participated in the research of the so-called Akambaro figurines later unequivocally recognized as counterfeits of the 20th century. In 1968, Gardner married his longtime secretary Agnes Bethel (1902-2002), who became the prototype of Della Street, the secretary of the main literary hero Gardner, the lawyer of Perry Mason.
