Larry Beinhart is an American author. He is best known as the author of the political and detective novel American Hero, which was adapted for the political-parody film Wag the Dog. No One Rides for Free (1986) received the 1987 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. His book, Fog Facts, examines why some important even striking truths are overlooked by the media and the culture at large.

Beinhart spent two years in Oxford, England, where he was a Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellow in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing at Wadham College. An avid skier and sometime instructor at Hunter Mountain in New York State, Beinhart spent one winter in St Anton, Austria researching Foreign Exchange and parts of several winters skiing in Verbier, Switzerland.

He currently resides in Woodstock, New York with his wife and two children.