Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business comics review and author interview

Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business. w. Arvind Ethan David. a. Ilias Kyriazis. Pantheon Books. 2025. 128pp. $29.

You may think you know Raymond Chandler. Thoughts of the quintessential detective Philip Marlowe and The Big Sleep may come to mind. In order to get to the bottom of it all, I highly recommend that you go back to the original 1939 short story by Raymond Chandler, featuring his most famous hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe–and the basis for this new graphic novel adaptation. Let me emphasize that this comics version is a gem. It does, without a doubt, bring up an issue in the zeitgeist that I’ve followed with great interest: re-working this or that classic work to contemporary scrutiny. It brings to mind a question I recently saw posted on Quora: Was John F. Kennedy a woke president? One person began their answer with: “It is not an easy fit, to take ‘woke’ values and apply them retroactively to 1960.” Not only is it not easy, the effort to examine history through a “do-over” lens is problematic. And, in creative works, the results can range from mixed to intriguing. That said, the trend to do do-overs is strong and prevalent ever since Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015, ten years ago. So, the impulse is there and the question is what do you do with that impulse.

Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler

Trouble Is My Business is a fast-moving Philip Marlowe short story authored by Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), that much we can’t deny. It is a classic noir detective story written by one of the masters. In all the rapid-fire storytelling, surely it would be asking a lot for Chandler to also recast himself as an activist or futurist–but, it turns out, he was far more aware than some may credit him to have been. The do-over strategy is playing with time travel or something beyond the reality of space and time. And perhaps that’s where a writer like Arvind Ethan David steps in to write this comics adaptation. He is no stranger to science fiction. He worked with Douglas Adams as executive producer to the TV adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Now, maybe I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek but I say all this just because I know other purists out there might be having some difficulty with a rethinking of a classic. But let’s take a pause. The way I see it, “a comics adaptation,” or any other adaptation, can utilize whatever options needed to fulfill a certain vision. Arvind Ethan David is no stranger to writing comics adaptations. He has written seven. And that’s only part of quite a remarkable career.

Arvind Ethan David’s approach, as he states in an interview with me, is to open up the story to other voices. He made a point of giving each major character a spotlight, complete with each having their own color palette and lettering font. That’s a tricky strategy, which David readily admits. You’re playing with the delicate balance to a tightly-woven mystery. When you add to a story, the trick is to not upturn the original’s purpose and charm: one gumshoe’s pursuit of solving a mystery. Not only that, we as readers owe it to ourselves to not overlook the original in other ways. For example, if you don’t bother to read the original, you might simply dismiss it as somehow inferior and unenlightened to today’s standards. Chandler’s version has George, a Black chauffeur, with an education from Dartmouth, who holds his own with the main character of Philip Marlowe. That’s certainly forward-thinking without it being forced upon the narrative.

“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

Without resorting to spoilers, let’s just say that the impulse to balance the order of things is very strong today and so there’s some tilting of the power dynamics in favor of George in this graphic novel. Again, a tricky matter to pull off but an interesting one. George is elevated a bit in status in this comics version–complete with Philip Marlowe thanking him for his heroics. Marlowe says to George: “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” But, hey, after Raymond Chandler was given time to recover from a time travel adventure to 2025, he probably would applaud this tinkering with his work! Give the guy some credit. My guess is that Chandler would politely quibble with his relatively plot-driven story being transformed into an even more nuanced character-driven story. Given ample time to soak up the zeitgeist, maybe he would just smile and say that it’s awesome. The guy knew how to read a room.

Harriet Huntress

Chandler’s short story also features a strong woman character, Harriet Huntress. She is a femme fatale and that may distress some readers but this is, after all, noir crime fiction so the character is true to form. It would be ridiculous to apologize for her being a villain. Anyway, she puts Philip Marlowe in his place in both the original story and in the comics adaptation with, as I say, the added benefit of getting her extended point of view in the graphic novel.

George Hasterman

It’s fascinating to read Chandler’s own introduction to his short story. He fears that there’s no way out of following a proven formula to writing a successful mystery. Well, you could argue that some writers today may fear there’s no way out of following a proven formula to writing a successful work that follows the latest trend. As I say during our conversation, I found David’s graphic novel to smoothly thread that needle. Part of what David is after is finding a way to tilt the focus, with a nod to the contemporary, and I believe he has achieved that. In David’s version, you see each major player take the stage in a fuller way, from their own point of view, and you can argue that Raymond Chandler himself would have had no problem with it. And he would have championed the artwork in this book by Ilias Kyriazis too.

So, I welcome re-imagining a classic. That’s not the issue. Just think of Orson Welles’s triumphant 1936 production of Macbeth, which featured an all-Black cast, 80 years before Hamilton. The problem is when people conflate history: mixing different events, time periods or contexts leads to inaccurate understanding of the past. Raymond Chandler’s original storytelling, his language, his artistry, doesn’t automatically require a retelling. Here’s a fine example from the original Raymond Chandler story: a quick snapshot of another strong woman character, Anna Halsey. A line, among so many other quintessential Chandler lines, that Arvind Ethan David uses in his graphic novel version too:

“I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he’s got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel.”

Nice knowin’ ya.

Ultimately, the do-over strategy, or we can call it the Hamilton Effect, still has a lot of gas in the tank and can lead to some interesting results. But, at the end of the day, we will do ourselves a great injustice if we dismiss this or that classic, solely based upon some notion, ill-conceived or otherwise. I’m not saying that is happening in this graphic novel. More discerning readers will appreciate what is going on in this comics adaptation. Chandler’s work does not demand to have new life breathed into it, per se, and withstands being “reworked” in the same creative spirit as other great fiction has been re-imagined, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen. I think, in that sense, we can say that Arvind Ethan David has created a most notable reworking.

I hope you enjoy the above conversation with Arvind Ethan David, the author of this graphic adaptation. Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business is published by Pantheon Books. Do seek it out. It is brainy, quirky and something Raymond Chandler would give a gracious salute.