Gary Fidel grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida in the 1950s-1960s, and now lives in New York City with his wife, Loretta.

He graduated cum laude in 1972 from the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied writing. He received his law degree from Duquesne University School of Law in 1975.

A member of the bar in New York, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, he served as a lawyer in Volunteers In Service To America ( VISTA) and then as a law clerk to an Arizona Superior Court Justice. Following several years in private practice, Mr. Fidel joined the Queens District Attorney's Office in 1982. He served for three years in the Appeals Bureau as an Assistant District Attorney and later as a Supreme Court trial assistant district attorney. He returned to the Appeals Bureau in 1988 and was appointed Deputy Bureau Chief of the Appeals Bureau in 1991. He has written and edited hundreds of briefs and argued appeals in state and federal appellate courts including the New York Court of Appeals and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was subsequently promoted to Director of Special Litigation and in 2000 was appointed by the Honorable Richard A. Brown, District Attorney of Queens County to the position of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Legal Affairs, overseeing the Appeals Bureau, all aspects of professional training, and the Special Litigation Unit. He has lectured extensively at conferences of the New York State District Attorney's Association and the Queens Bar Association. He has published consumer-oriented articles on legal issues in Family Weekly and book reviews in New York Newsday and The New York Law Journal.

He was a co-author of two non-fiction law related books. He also has a long standing interest in creative writing, having published several short stories in college literary magazines.

His debut novel, The Blue Rider stems from his many conversations over a period of years with Lea Weingel, a young woman who lived in Latvia during the Nazi’s invasion of the country in WWII.