In this graphic novel adaptation, Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business, the book’s foreword asks the following question: “Why adapt this particular story into a graphic novel?” Ben H. Winters eventually answers the question, but by simply broaching it, he might remind readers how our cultural landscape has seen media companies and film studios wring every last drop of blood from the intellectual properties they own. That said, this graphic adaptation of Chandler’s 1939 short story still offers readers a unique entry into the world of Chandler’s hard-drinking, deep-thinking private detective Phillip Marlowe.
Marlowe is hired by an industrialist to protect his wayward adopted son Gerald from femme fatale archetype Harriet Huntress, who may have her own sinister intentions. After Gerald is is found dead, Marlowe must find the killer among a plethora of suspects, including Harriet, a mysterious chauffeur who displays a certain set of skills, and the typical thugs and criminals who populate 1930’s Los Angeles. It also goes without saying that finding the killer means Phillip Marlowe will live to drink, fight, and quip another day.
Telling a story in a visual medium (in movies or graphic storytelling) means that the original story is often condensed, sometimes brutally so. Secondary plots and characters that added flavor to the story are cut away from the story till all that remains is what can be told through a visual medium. This simple fact makes writer Arvind Ethan David’s choice of adapting a short story (rather than, say, a 400 page epic tale) a wise one. In retelling Trouble Is My Business, David shows he can balance the large amount of snappy dialogue while keeping the story’s pacing humming along. However, David seems to challenge himself by adding details about the inner lives of characters like Harriet without bogging down any of the action.
Telling the story, however, is only half of this book’s task; the other half is providing visuals that complement Chandler’s words and David’s direction and Ilias Kyriazis’s artwork is up to the task. The people populating this story are what one would expect from a 1930’s detective story. Jaws are suitably square, lips are drawn with just the right amount of sneer, and the women who perhaps shouldn’t be trusted look both beautiful and dangerous. The book offers up delicious eye candy apart from Harriet Huntress. This eye candy includes gunshots that seem to zip across the page and languidly curling cigarette smoke stretching toward the top of the page.
There may be those adult patrons, perhaps even those who’ve read all about Marlow’s exploits, who would turn up their nose at this book because they have been fed (perhaps even overfed) a diet of rehashes and reimaginings. However, retellings in the graphic novel format like this one shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. There are plenty of graphic novel retellings of classic stories that serve not only as introductions to these books’ original source material but may draw readers to other classics, both graphically and non-graphically retold, that they might not have otherwise discovered.
Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business
By Raymond Chandler, Arvind Ethan David
Art by Ilias Kyriazis
Pantheon, 2025
ISBN: 9780553387599
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
Creator Representation: British,
