Trouble is My Business, by Raymond Chandler, with Arvind Ethan David

Arvind Ethan David joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler.

Arvind is a writer and and producer who tells stories and builds accidental businesses around them.

Most recently, he released Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth (Pushkin). The Boy with Wings (based on Sir Lenny Henry’s book) premiered in summer 2025 at The Polka Theatre London.

Get your gorgeous illustrated book here! And check out the rest of our storefront for more by Arvind and our other guests.
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What an interview! Arvind Ethan David joined Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison to discuss Trouble Is My Business, a new graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler’s classic tale. We could have talked to him for hours!

Arvind Ethan David is a Stoker Award nominated graphic novelist who has also written chart-topping audiodramas (The Crimes of Dorian Gray, Earworms), television (Anansi Boys), and plays (The Boy with Wings). Arvind is also a producer of film and theater, including the Emmy & Grammy award winning musical Jagged Little Pill.

Arvind’s career as a writer and producer started when he adapted the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency as a college play. The great science fiction author came to see it and took the young writer under his wing. (Years later, Arvind brought Dirk Gently to a global audience as a Netflix/AMC TV series.)

Since then, Arvind has written for page, stage, screen, audio and everywhere else one can tell a story. In addition to Trouble is my Business, his graphic novels include the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency series (also with art by Ilias Kyriazis), Darkness Visible (Stoker nominated, written with Mike Carey) and Gray, his reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Arvind’s audio work includes the chart-topping Audible Originals: The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe, the science fiction Anthology series Earworms and The Crimes of Dorian Gray.

Arvind Ethan David also works in television, including serving as an Executive Producer on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for Netflix and BBC America and writing on Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys for Amazon Studios.

His theater experience includes writing the stage adaptations of the Douglas Adams novels Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (with James Goss) and Lenny Henry’s The Boy with Wings. He is also a lead producer of the Tony & Grammy winning musical Jagged Little Pill.

Arvind Ethan David runs Prodigal, an entertainment business, with producer Tarquin Pack (KICKASS, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, STARDUST) and entrepreneur Scott Kay. Together, they work across TV, film, theater, publishing, gaming, and escape rooms — anywhere there is a good story to be told.

Trouble Is My Business is a new graphic novel by Raymond Chandler and Arvind Ethan David. The book is illustrated by Ilias Kyriazis. The forward was written by Ben H. Winters. The colorist is Cris Peter.

Transcript

Sarah Harrison: 0:24

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I'm your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: 0:35

And I'm your host. Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic, but not a toxin, and join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

Sarah Harrison: 0:58

Today's amazing sponsor is Linden Botanicals, a Colorado-based company that sells the world's healthiest herbal teas and extracts. Their team has traveled the globe to find the herbs that offer the best science based support for stress relief, energy, memory, mood, kidney health, joint health, digestion, and inflammation. U.S. orders over$75 ship free. To learn more, visit lindenbotanicals.com and use code MYSTERY to get 15% off your first order. Thanks, Linden Botanicals. We have such a fun book today, Carolyn. Trouble Is My Business. I'm so excited!

Carolyn Daughters: 1:47

I have not read enough graphic novels, and I'm now wondering why.

Sarah Harrison: 1:53

I'm a huge fan. I saw this email come into our inbox, and I was like, graphic novel, and I didn't even ask Carolyn. Normally, we would collaborate, and I'm like, we're doing this one.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:03

We were aligned.

Sarah Harrison: 2:07

She didn't argue, but I definitely was super excited. Very, very cool. It's a graphic novel adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business. So if you've been listening to us, we've just finished our second Raymond Chandler book this year.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:22

And four episodes on Raymond Chandler.

Sarah Harrison: 2:25

It has been delightful. It was also really fortuitous, the timing. I think Carolyn's gonna talk a little bit about Raymond Chandler, and then I am chomping at the bit to introduce our guest.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:37

Today, we're discussing Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business, the brilliant graphic adaptation of the classic Raymond Chandler novella featuring detective Philip Marlowe. The graphic novella was written by Raymond Chandler and Arvind Ethan David, who is our guest today. Los Angeles, 1930s. A rich old man who knows trouble when he sees it hires a detective agency to scare off a young woman who seems to be making his adopted son hemorrhage cash. Fortunately for the detective, a hard-drinking man named Philip Marlowe, trouble is his business. The young woman, Harriet, has an agenda all her own and aspirations beyond being a shill for a gambler. She's nobody's fool. Nor is the old man. For his part, he's got serious muscle, a chauffeur with a degree from Dartmouth, the only black student from his class who knows his way around a gun and isn't afraid to use it. Right in the middle of all of it is a big pile of money, and when the bodies begin to drop, only Philip Marlowe can sort out which of these suspects is pulling the trigger. Raymond Chandler was the Master Practitioner of American hardboiled crime fiction. In 1933, at the age of 45, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler's detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe, introduced in 1939 in his first novel The Big Sleep, which we covered on this podcast. His novels were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of his novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies that helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in LA Jolla, California in 1959.

Sarah Harrison: 4:24

It is my pleasure to introduce our guest today. Arvind Ethan David is a writer and producer whose career started when he was still a student and adapted Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as a play. The great science fiction author came to see it amazing and took the young writer under his wing. Since then, Arvind has written for page, stage, screen, audio, and everywhere else one can tell a story. In addition to Trouble Is My Business, his graphic novels include the Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency series. (Illustrated by Ilias Kyriazis. The foreword is by Ben H. Winters. The colorist is Cris Peter.) Darkness Visible. Stoker nominated, written with Mike Carey and Gray, his reimagining of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Arvind's audio work includes the chart topping audible originals the Neil Gaiman at the end of the universe science fiction anthology series Earworms and the Crimes of Dorian Gray. Television work includes serving as an executive producer on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency for Netflix and BBC America and writing on Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys for Amazon Studios. Theater includes writing the stage adaptations of the Douglas Adams novels Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency with James Gross and Lenny Henry's The Boy with Wings. He is also a lead producer of the Tony and Grammy winning musical Jagged Little Pill. Welcome Arvin. Thanks so much for joining us.

Arvind Ethan David: 6:13

Hello, hello, hello. Lovely to be here.

Carolyn Daughters: 6:17

That is quite the bio, literally every sentence, I'm like, that's amazing. We could have cut it off after sentence four, and I would have been like, we've got to have this guy on. He's amazing.

Sarah Harrison: 6:31

And the Trouble Is My Business book is gorgeous.

Arvind Ethan David: 6:34

Thank you. That's all Elias and Chris, my brilliant art team. Elias is this insanely talented Greek, and Chris is this even more insanely talented Brazilian. And Elias and I have now made four books together, and we've met once, and maybe spoken three times. Chris and I have never spoken or met really. It's all in writing and sometimes in little videos. Elias will send me little sketches and video, and I'll send little stick men back. We do it all on the page, and it makes it a very special collaboration. It's a very pure collaboration. It is completely uncluttered by personality or ego, that is entirely about the work.

Carolyn Daughters: 7:29

That's awesome. So it sounds like you found a team that understands what you're trying to do, and they're able to see what you've put on the page. Is that how it's working? They're looking at the content, and then they're creating visuals and colors? And you also have somebody who's doing fonts. I mean, are they interpreting that? To what degree are you working with them to figure those things out?

Arvind Ethan David: 7:53

Yes, letters are by the brilliant Taylor Esposito. As you gather, it's a property international team. I think we have that's for ethnicities and four continents. I think that team. So there are so many ways of writing comic books, and everyone is different. I come from a film and TV background. It's where I cut my teeth. And so I write my comic scripts like film scripts. I write them in final draft, and I am medium descriptive about what you're seeing. And with Ilias, I am less descriptive because we have history now. We are in each other's heads. When we started, I would have, I would occasionally do pencil sketches, as I say, a sort of stick man and so on. Now pretty much. I say how many panels I think the page has, because that's a pacing thing. And I will describe the camera shots, you know? I'll say, this is a wide, this is a two shot. This is a close. I'll say ridiculous things like, let us give the impression of a tracking shot. It's an impossible thing to do in stationary images, but he'll get what I'm going for and do a version of that. And the other crazy challenge I set them when we started Trouble Is My Business was I said that I wanted each major character, Philip Marlowe, Harriet Huntress, and our chauffeur ...

Carolyn Daughters: 9:25

George Hasterman.

Arvind Ethan David: 9:27

George Hasterman ... to have their own palette and to have their own font to think and sound different and to inhabit a different world. And they were like, sure, okay. And then they said, so what happens when they meet? And I went, Yeah, I don't know. We'll figure that out. We did. But it's great.

Sarah Harrison: 9:51

It really is. I'm gonna hold up a copy of Trouble Is My Business. We're not a video podcast, but we do take clips. It's gorgeous. Yes, and your team was kind enough to send us an extra so listeners, be prepared for a giveaway coming up. It is beautiful. And I'm glad you brought up the color thing. It was something that definitely came to my mind, but I didn't articulate it. You just notice, like Philip Marlowe is really always gray in every scene. And then reading the back, I loved it, the morally gray world of Philip Marlowe. And I was like, oh, that's like his Crayola color. He's morally gray. Do you have adjectives that go with the other colors? You know, Harriet, so bright, George ...

Arvind Ethan David: 10:38

It was also about film style. Marlowe is in a classic black and white noir, right? He's in The Big Sleep. That's the movie he's in. That's how he sees the world. Harriet deliberately starts with her childhood, which is not in the original. That's invention for this. And she's Dorothy. She's in Technicolor. I wanted her to have a childhood of technicolor that was then taken away from her by the events of the story. So she's in technicolor, and George is somewhere in between. George is in a World War II action movie. George is in the mighty dozen, or something like that. He's an action hero. Harriet is a child heroine, and Marlowe is Marlowe. That was the language.

Sarah Harrison: 11:41

That's awesome. I love that.

Carolyn Daughters: 11:43

In the foreword of Trouble Is My Business, there's some discussion about how the books are actually written in a way that, like they having this graphic adaptation of them makes sense. The colors like Harriet's hair and her lapis lazuli eyes and her like you can see, you can see these colors and images as you're reading. It almost lends itself to a graphic novella like this.

Arvind Ethan David: 12:10

I mean, Chandler was one of the great pro stylists of the 20th century. If we can't start with that as a shared understanding, since I'm in the company of fellow travelers, but for people who don't know that, just open any of the books almost at random, and pull out a sentence, and you will see a man incapable of spinning a dull paragraph. And that has a number of implications when you're adapting him. The first and most obvious is that it's terrifying, because you have to write words that will sit alongside his words and come out characters' mouths and not make them sound like idiots. "I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars," says a character casually in Trouble Is My Business. You know what? Okay, I'll follow that. But so that's the bar he sets, and that's the intimidating part. But where he's enormously helpful is when you can take his dialogue and just use it, you get to seem like a genius. So that's nice. And when you get to take his prose and hand it to your artists, there's no question what color Harriet Huntress was his eyes or hair? Was going to be the description of her hair. Her hair was like, what was it? Was the color of a flame that had partially died out, but was still burning, burning enough to be dangerous. I mean, it's extraordinary. And so, yes, when I was going through the text and selecting what I could use and what would have to be cut. He's an extraordinary visual writer. He, of course, was also a screenwriter most famously of Double Indemnity, probably the greatest noir movie ever written, and with The Big Sleep in the top three, let's be clear. So he thinks visually. Although he was quite snooty about Hollywood, he had some bad experiences as well, including Alfred Hitchcock throwing away in front of that was wild, his draft of Strangers on a Train.

Carolyn Daughters: 14:41

That story was amazing, I guess threw away his draft in front of him. Imagine that it's happening live. Here it is in the trash.

Sarah Harrison: 14:55

One of the things that excited me, you've alluded to it. It's a graphic novel. I feel like the noir mystery genre has become so entwined with like the noir visuals of movies. Maybe even, I think people think Noir. They think movies first, and maybe mystery second. Can you, can you talk a little bit more about the visual take on this and the noir take and maybe all the smoke drawn in Trouble Is My Business, the smoke is like a character unto itself.

Arvind Ethan David: 15:31

A few thoughts come to mind. The first is, noir is one of these really debated classifications, because there are those who argue that properly understood, it's not a genre at all that it doesn't have. And I actually disagree with this, but I understand the argument which is a genre has to be defined by its plot elements as well as by its stylistic elements, and Noir is more style and that you can apply noir to many different types of stories, I can see that. But when most people say noir, they mean detective noir, and Detective noir does have its very clear plot and genre requirements. And you're right it very quickly, again, in part because of Chandler and Hammett and their imitators and fans in the Golden Age of Hollywood, it became synonymous with screen very quickly, but it absolutely started in books. It started in the pulps, and Chandler's particular contribution was to elevate it to literature, which is not a small thing. And I think what that did, in terms of the visuals is then it got his books in particular, got adapted over and over again. I mean, they are at least three versions of The Big Sleep. Only one is any good. But there are three. There are so many Raymond Chandler films and then all the imitations. I mean, the titles just get used and used. There's a, there's an apple series right now called the lady in the lake, which is owes, stylistically, I think, quite a lot to Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake. But is not that story. It is its own, completely its own story.

Carolyn Daughters: 17:26

There's Trouble Is My Business.

Arvind Ethan David: 17:30

There's a noir movie called Trouble Is My Business, which takes nothing from this story except the title. I mean, he was good at titles. You have to give him that, as well as everything else. I think the other thing that's interesting with respect to graphic novels, visuals and comics specifically, is noir has been hugely influential in comic books. And then many of those comic books have become movies. In this genre, maybe most famously, Sin City in Sin City, Frank Miller is very much taking Chandler and putting him on acid and crack and taking it to its utmost moral degradation extreme. And then, of course, the movie gets made. Robert Rodriguez, credit, Quentin Tarantino and Frank Miller direct the movie, and it spawns all its imitators. And so the snake eats itself, which would have pleased Chandler and so many other great graphic novelists, from Brian Michael Bendis to Brian Azullo to who else. 100 bullets like all these great graphic novels fatal that play in this space, but they all are harking back, ultimately, to Chandler and so to do this was like, Okay, I'm going back to the UR text. I have to know everything that has been done since, and then I have to ignore it and start again, because otherwise you are just, it gets worse than the snake eating itself. It becomes some, well, I would say what it becomes.

Carolyn Daughters: 19:15

It becomes sort of derivative. How did you choose Raymond Chandler and his story Trouble Is My Business? When you did, you think to yourself, I want to create a graphic novel, graphic novella, and therefore, let me look at the range of options in the world. And I want to do Raymond Chandler, or did this particular story speak to you? How did you choose this amongst the seven novels in the one collection of short stories, for example.

Arvind Ethan David: 19:45

Well first, if they are people whose career has come that well organized and thought through, I want to meet them. I am not one of them. No, this happened so I was just finishing my grade. My two-volume freestyle on Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, and the publisher of that, and the editor, this guy called Ted Adams, who founded the comic book company IDW, and he was, in fact, retiring. And so this was not really a business conversation, but he said to me, I have someone I want to introduce you to. And he introduced me to a gentleman called Alexander Greene. And he really just said, you and he will get on. And I think stuff will come from it. And Alexander Greene turned out to occupy a very strange place in literary history, which is on his father's side, he is Graham Greene's grandnephew, and on his grandmother's side, he is Raymond Chandler's heir.

Sarah Harrison: 20:58

What? Yes, we got to get him on the show.

Arvind Ethan David: 21:02

It's selfish, right? It's selfish to be descended from both sides, from the true greatness. It's almost too much. Although I will tell you, I thought he was completely unique in this and then we had a party this weekend. That was our birthdays. My father and I show her birthday. And so we were having a party, and I was telling the story, and then someone goes, well, my grandmother, on my grandmother's side were descended from Lord Byron, and then my grandfather's side were descended from Robbie Burns. We went, No, that is ridiculous. She goes, No, no, I have, I have the I have the 23 in me. It is correct.

Sarah Harrison: 21:43

She's doing something big with that.

Arvind Ethan David: 21:46

She's a creator, so she's an actor. And then, and then another friend of mine, I'm gonna say who this is, my friend, Stephanie Folsom, who's a screenwriter that she won an Oscar for Toy Story four, and is a brilliant screenwriter. And she said, Yeah, I don't like to talk about it, but I've got some of that going on. What do you? What do you? She goes, Well, I'm in all, I'm in all cop, as in Louise, Mary. Apparently, it doesn't hurt to be descended from the true greatness, I suppose. Anyway, to answer your question, Alexander Greene and I became friends. He is charged with the care of the Chandler canon. And he said, I want to do stuff. What do you want to do? He's like, do you want to do a graphic novel? I was like, I think so. As in, why this one. I guess there are two answers. One may be more honest than the other. The sort of cowardice would be the honest answer. I couldn't imagine starting with any of the master works. I couldn't imagine going, I'm going to start with The Big Sleep, because I know exactly what to do with that. It just seemed like climbing Everest where else with a minor and early work like Trouble Is My Business. This was first published. I think, hold on. Let me Yes, right. It's incredibly early. In fact, in that version, it wasn't even a Philip Marlowe story yet. The detective in it was called somebody else. John Dalmas, a lot of his early stories, he was trying it out. He was trying to figure out his detective. And so there's a bunch of different characters with a bunch of different names, but they're all feeling their way towards Marlowe. And the original version is not even it's not that good, honestly. And then he rewrites it 20 years later, no, not that, I think 10-11, years later, and puts Marlowe in and reconfigures it. And that's the version I've adapted. But you can still see the joins. You can see him figuring stuff out. There are plot strands that aren't finished off. It's never completely clear from the original who did it. It's just, it's left, not just ambiguous. It's left unfinished. Chandler famously only cared about plot up to a point like he did. There's a fantastic story from the set of The Big Sleep, when Humphrey Bogart said to Chandler, so, just so I know, who killed the chauffeur. Chander said, I don't know. Does it matter?

Sarah Harrison: 24:43

He was the question of a one.

Arvind Ethan David: 24:43

It's impossible to figure it out from the big sleeve, both in Trouble Is My Business and in the movie, The chauffeur is dead for no apparent reason, anyway. So this had a bunch of stuff like that. For example, the wonderful George Hasterman. There are two chauffeurs in the short story, and the first one is not named, and is probably George as well. But it's never made quite clear or explicit that he is, and George's race is never described explicitly. He is said to have shiny white teeth and curly hair and dark skin, but he's never explicitly signified. And so I was like, okay, they're interesting things. Here. They are things that if he maybe had written this as a novel, he would have done more with, and that seemed an invitation to me.

Carolyn Daughters: 25:45

The version of Trouble Is My Business that I read, and it might have been one redone that, as you said, 10 or 11 years later, or something like that, did make George's race clear, and does make clear who did the murders, though, and it's in a Chandler-esque, murky, really. This is not the critical plot point sort of thing at the end. So I'm wondering which version I read, and now I want to go back and find out.

Arvind Ethan David: 26:13

I think you'll see. I mean, I'd be very interested, because I've read at least two, if not three versions. I wonder if you read it again, if it's the race thing, whether it's absolutely explicit, I think he does. I think he does. There's enough. There are certainly clues. But what's interesting to me is that they are only clues, because the story set in the 1930s in Los Angeles, race was not a casual thing. The idea that a black man would have been having an affair with a white woman is, of itself going to be commented on, and that Chandler doesn't comment on it in the short story is incredibly interesting to me, and so, and that led me down the interesting rabbit hole of, would it have been legal? Oh, interesting California passed, or the California Supreme Court allowed interracial marriage fully 15 years before loving and so you go, Okay, this is interesting. So there were things like that in Trouble Is My Business. And I was like, Oh, I can get my teeth into this and write stuff that doesn't feel extraneous or just to satisfy myself, but that fleshes out a story that is, in its essence, great, but maybe has some space in the margins for some interesting doodling.

Sarah Harrison: 27:41

I think we noticed that about some of the other Chandler books. We had a whole debate in one of the episodes about it sounded like a character could have been murdered or commit suicide. And I was in the sight of suicide, and Carolyn thought, well, it's explicitly murder. And so we had to go back to the details and be like, Well, what did it actually say? It was really a lot was implied, but it wasn't exactly as cut and dried as maybe you could walk away with. But that brings me to another you've already touched on it a little bit with George, but I want to know more about when and where you decided to make departures from the original without giving away the storyline too much, but, but what was behind your departures, and where did you make those choices?

Arvind Ethan David: 28:35

There is so a thing that is true of noir, of detective Noir is that it is told from the point of view of the detective, that is its essence. And there's often a voice over. And certainly all the Philip Marlowe novels are narrated by Philip Marlowe, and he has a wonderful voice, an extraordinary alcoholic, laconic, noble, cynical, night, errant narration. And that is wonderful. Don't get me wrong, I could luxuriate in that voice forever, as written by Raymond Chandler, but it of course, leaves out things and people Marlowe for all his compassion, and he is, I think, a compassionate man, and for all his imagination, is still a straight, white six foot two war hero in the 1940s and he sees the world the way he sees the world. And in particular, he sees women a particular way, and he sees people of color a particular way. And I don't think, I don't for a moment, think Chandler was particularly racist or misogynistic. I think he was less racist and less misogynistic than was the norm of his of his age and sex and time. I think he had infinitely more imagination, because great writers have to. Nevertheless, the books are told from a singular point of view, and a thing that a graphic novel lets you do is change where the camera is pointing and change the voice over. The font can change and a different character provides the voice over. So I guess the biggest thing I did was to say that at key moments, I was going to take the story in Trouble Is My Business away from Marlowe and give it to Harriet and give it to George, and it's not an equal three hander. Marlowe still is the story engine, and that's a function of plot necessity, because if the people who did the crime are narrating the crime, then you don't have much mystery left. But sorry, that's a spoiler, but I took it away from him enough, I think I hope to give them in a life and to let their perspectives influence this world in very algebraic terms. In Chandler's version, the title refers to Marlowe. Trouble is his business. In my version, there's a lot more trouble in the life of being a woman in the 1940s a woman not of means, and there's a lot more trouble in being a black man than there is in being Philip Marlowe.

Carolyn Daughters: 31:25

Those are the two characters that stand out the most to me as having development beyond Chandler's version. And it's really interesting to start Trouble Is My Business. And we're not spoiling anything here. This is on page one, where we're seeing 15 years earlier, 1931 and we're seeing Harriet with her father. And it's an interesting it's taking a detail from Chandler's work, and they're just really expanding it. And that that's such an interesting thing. How did it come to you? Which parts did you say George? I'm going to make George a broader character. I'm going to dig into Harriet's backstory a little bit. How did you make those decisions?

Arvind Ethan David: 32:10

The clues are in the original. Chandler's great genius was he didn't write whodunits. Or they're not only whodunits, they are whydunits. And the why this the psychology of the individuals, and even more than that, how their psychology is formed by the societies in which they live. That's why Chandler has endured. Every one of those characters are like crushed glass or diamonds made by the morally corrupting forces of the time and place in which they live. And so when I had deciphered the various versions and figured out that some combination of Harriet and George done it, I may be just not as, as close a reader as you. Carolyn, I was never 100% sure, let's go if it's done. I was like, okay. Then the question becomes why, and the why had to be, not as simple as I wanted revenge or I wanted money, the why had to be, How did I become a person capable of doing these things and so and again, the clues are all in the original. In the original version of Trouble Is My Business, Harriet's family is ruined by goodness, by cheetah. Cheetah, the cheetah that cheetah, and her family is ruined by Jeeta, all nice and legal, as she says, but ruined, nevertheless. And so I was like, Okay, how? How are they ruined? What happened? What did he do to them? What did that do to her family? What did it do to her? And similarly, we know in the original Marlowe asks George where he where he went to college. And that struck me as such an extraordinary detail. It's not something anyone in any other Raymond Chandler book asks somebody. Marlowe could care less where people went to university. He's not a man to stand on education or the Ivy League, but for some reason, he asks George. And I was like, He's asking George, because George is unusual, because George is a black man who went to a top tier school. How did that happen? And what is the cost of that, and what are the benefits of that, and what does that do? I was one of three people of color in my year at Oxford, 25 years ago, and I was like, okay, I have some sense of what that does. And so I was like, okay, let's write that story a little bit in Trouble Is My Business.

Carolyn Daughters: 34:59

I think 25 years ago, one of three. That's incredible.

Arvind Ethan David: 35:06

It's much better now.

Carolyn Daughters: 35:09

I'm very glad to hear that. Wow.

Sarah Harrison: 35:13

Those stories are always interesting. I went to an engineering school, and if you go back and listen to the lady graduates from years ago, their stories about this building didn't have a women's bathroom for here, it's just incredible, like the changes that have occurred.

Arvind Ethan David: 35:31

I can tell my library, my college library, went to the other way, it had a unisex bathroom, a non-denominational bathroom, because, presumably, it had only ever had a male bathroom, because it only ever had male students. And then eventually, sometime in the 60s or 70s, the college became coeducational, and there was no interest in putting in a second buff.

Sarah Harrison: 36:00

No, we're not gonna blow that.

Arvind Ethan David: 36:03

You kidding? These are 17th century pipes.

Sarah Harrison: 36:07

That's awesome. I want to ask you a little bit too, just maybe it's my personal interest. But in your bio, besides Trouble Is My Business, you mentioned you collaborated with Elias on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency series, and you said you've done four different collaborations with Elias. What are the other ones? How can I look them up and read them?

Arvind Ethan David: 36:29

We did three volumes.

Sarah Harrison: 36:32

Three volumes of Dirk Gently.

Arvind Ethan David: 36:35

For, I think, more than three years. We did A Spoon Too Short, and then a Salmon of Doubt part I, and a Salmon of Doubt part II.

Sarah Harrison: 36:46

I still remember studying in high school and reading Douglas Adams for the first time and just bursting out laughing in classes. It's so good. And my secret goal, maybe not so secret, is to do a little bit more crossover on the podcast with some mystery sci fi work going on. Talk about Douglas Adams in that relationship there.

Arvind Ethan David: 37:14

I also remember reading Hitchhiker's Guide. I think before high school, I think I was 11 when I read hitchhikers. But then what I read at high school was the duck, gently, duck, gently, Holistic Detective Agency books, which were, of course, Douglas homage and satire of noir. He took the noir things, like the Raymond Chandler Trouble Is My Business things, and twisted them around his pretzel shaped mind, mixed in a bit of chaos theory and quantum physics, and came up with Dirk Gently. And I fell in love with those books. I fell in love hard and in part because Dirk Gently is a character who takes absolutely nothing for granted, and for no apparent reason, is full of self-confidence. That idea of completely undeserved self-confidence struck me as worth emulating. It was the only type I felt I had any right to as a teenager.

Carolyn Daughters: 38:17

I know so many people who fit that bill.

Sarah Harrison: 38:21

Self-confidence. Maybe they're onto something.

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 38:29

And so adapted. First is my high school play, and then again, in college, those books for the stage, and for reasons that remain somewhat unclear to me Douglas Adams gave his permission and then came to see them, and I still remember the letter. The letter was very charming. It said, Dear Mr. David Douglas Adams does not believe that his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is suitable for adaptation into stage. However, he will not stop you from trying. That's awesome. And so he came to see it, and I think he at least didn't hate it. And he said very sweetly, he said it made him think for the first time that maybe there was a TV series in it, and he should spend some time on that. And so I would have been 17 or 18. We became friendly and stayed friendly. I mean, we were not friends. He was a giant in every sense. He was 25 years, 30 years older than me, and much taller and much richer and much more glamorous. But I interned at his company. I got invited to some parties. I got a Christmas card. I got copied in on emails from time to time, going, Why am I on this email? The other people on it are Steve Jobs and John Cleese.

Sarah Harrison: 40:03

Oh, my goodness, you have John Cleese's email.

Carolyn Daughters: 40:08

Which you have abused liberally for years. Send it to us!

Arvind Ethan David: 40:13

I give it out on the air frequently.

Carolyn Daughters: 40:16

And just out of curiosity, like, if I were going to reach out to John Cleese ... I'm just kidding.

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 40:25

Well, of course. I mean, it's a story which is Douglas worshiped John the way I worshiped Douglas, because John, John is half a generation older than Douglas. Douglas went to Cambridge, hoping to become John Cleese, met him whilst at Cambridge, interviewed him for the Cambridge newspaper, and then, when he graduated, went and worked for the pythons as a staff writer and researcher, and is the only non-core member of the Pythons to have both a writing credit and an acting credit in one of their TV series. So anyway, so sorry. Very long answers. So we were friendly, but he died tragically in 2001 some time ago now and, but then years later, I kept in touch with the family, and I had a lot of his friends and partners had become my friends and collaborators. And then years later, I was at a wedding, and sitting next to me was the man who had written that letter, the letter that said that asylums does not think no way to be adopted. His agent the now sadly late, great Ed Victor. And I thought, Ed's not going to remember me. He hasn't seen me since I was in my 20s. And I turned to Ed, and said you won't remember me. But he said, Arvind, even David, Holistic Detective Agency. And he said, Oh, we've just got those rights back. You always got it. Do you want them? Oh, what? And so then, 25 years later, I got to make the TV series that Douglas said he would get around to making one day. And so I made that for Netflix and AMC, and that got me back into Douglas's world. And I haven't left since we are I have this book coming out, Douglas Adams The Ends of the Earth, which is an intellectual biography of Douglas, I suppose. I hesitate to call it that. It's more. It's more an investigation into how Douglas thought about the biggest problems in the world, because he thought obsessively and seriously about climate change and conservation and the dangers and possibilities of the internet and social media and AI and space travel and politics and economics and governance and religion and philosophy. And he was a deeply profound thinker who just happened to work in comedy, and so I wanted to tease out some of those big ideas, and the family gave me access to his archive, and we digitized a bunch of tapes that had never been heard. And so that's been a very joyous and therapeutic project over the last few crazy.

Sarah Harrison: 43:21

That's one of the most delightful stories I've ever heard. You know, David Morrell told the story about how Geoffrey Household didn't like First Blood. They were pen pals. He inspired First Blood, and then he didn't like it and refused to review it.

Carolyn Daughters: 43:39

It was a little little too bloody for Geoffrey Household.

Sarah Harrison: 43:43

That is another delightful relationship. I love that.

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 43:49

That's amazing. We're watching a total unknown at the moment. It's also like Dylan's correspondence of Johnny Cash.

Sarah Harrison: 43:57

I really want to watch that.

Arvind Ethan David: 43:59

I mean, if you google Dylan and Cash's correspondence, the letters will break your heart. It's so beautiful. It's a very similar story. I think there's a great tradition of this. It's a thing that I don't think is talked about enough, but most writers are mentored by another writer or more, and send, sometimes, if they're lucky, in person and through a friendship, but at a minimum, always through the work. There's always a relationship where that that that baton is passed from one generation to the next.

Carolyn Daughters: 44:42

So you have taken your hand to writing your own mystery novel. I understand I am. You're in the process of writing it, I think.

Arvind Ethan David: 44:53

I am very in the process of writing. I am very conscious of an impending day.

Carolyn Daughters: 44:59

Deadlines. That's the only way we writers get anything done, is we have a deadline. Otherwise it would take 14 years to write every book, including Trouble Is My Business.

Arvind Ethan David: 45:10

I agree. I may have taken that a little literally. I currently under three different deadlines.

Carolyn Daughters: 45:18

So it's a historical mystery. It is the historical Edwardian period.

Arvind Ethan David: 45:30

Essentially, it's set in Sherlock Holmes's London, because, well, for many reasons. First, I am a Holmesian. But also because there was something about the early 1900s that feels terrifyingly relevant to what is happening in the world today. It was a time where global politics was about the great game. Was about the great powers exercising by force their will on the world. And it was the height of imperialism and colonialism, and obviously a very violent and racist time which hopefully doesn't sound at all familiar to anyone.

Carolyn Daughters: 46:29

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Arvind Ethan David: 46:33

I was interested in that world, and rather like in the Chandler, I was asked at Comic-Con. I was on a panel in Comic-Con some years ago with, actually, with the cast of dirt gently. And we were asked, what's your favorite Comic-Con Cosplay? Who would you come to Comic-Con as I loved it. And everybody, had these great answers. And then it came to me, and I said, Well, look, I have a problem. Because I was like, the guy to my right, my friend Max, was like he had said show, he had said Superman. And easy for him to be Superman. He's a tall, strapping, white guy. He puts on a cape, and he's Superman. I'm like, I don't know. There aren't many characters who look like me. I have to do more than put on a cape or I'm like brown Superman Sherlock.

Sarah Harrison: 47:30

Brown Sherlock. Please go as that next time.

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 47:33

This goes Brown Sherlock. But so, but what, of course, interests me. And then you get all the sort of nonsense fuss when things like Bridgerton come out and the black and brown people in historical time. And everyone goes, so that's ahistorical. They are distorting the historical record. And I go, yes, they are that that that show is a fantasy. And that's fine. It's very clear it's a fantasy. But of course, it is a nonsense to suggest that they weren't lots of black and brown people in Edwardian England, there were plenty. England was a global empire, and had, there was no and by the way, open borders was just the normal status of the world until about 1970, there was no such thing as shut borders. People turned up. If you Google or ask ChatGPT, what you did you have to do to immigrate to England in 1905 the answer was, you turned up. There was no paperwork. There was no passport. You just turned up. You were there. Hi. So, yes, so the dread and the envy, which is my Sherlockian adventure? In many ways, a sort of classic Conan Doyle/Bram Stoker type mystery with some supernatural overtones, but it also brings to its center characters from elsewhere in the empire and people who perhaps got left out of the original narratives and in ways that I hope are surprising and interesting.

Carolyn Daughters: 49:15

When I was in graduate school for four years, I studied literature of empire and fin de siecle literature in Britain. And so I'm super excited about this mystery novel, and I'm super excited to see who populates it.

Arvind Ethan David: 49:30

You now just condemned yourself to being an early reader.

Carolyn Daughters: 49:37

Oh my gosh. All you have to do is give me John Cleese's email address. I'm gonna be an early reader even without John Cleese's email address, I would love to be an early reader of your book. Very much.

Sarah Harrison: 49:51

Our podcast pretty much thrives on the fact that we actually read all of the books. We don't just read the back of the book. We read Trouble Is My Business. Carolyn, I did want to ask you, who would you go as at Comic-Con?

Carolyn Daughters: 50:05

Oh, probably Gabrielle from Xena, Warrior Princess.

Sarah Harrison: 50:14

See my character, me and my husband play this game ...

Carolyn Daughters: 50:16

Or maybe Xena. I just would have to wear a wig.

Sarah Harrison: 50:19

I wouldn't go with someone that looks like me, either. But my pick, maybe you've never heard of him, is Sergeant Frog. He's a frog from space. He has a spherical green head, and so I have this whole paper mache globe plan that I'm gonna do. Oh, did you look him up? He's delightful. He wears a man suit sometimes. So I'd have to get a suit and a globe head. But I love that. Oh yeah, costumes I would rule. Oh, my goodness. Arvind, I can't believe it's been 50 minutes and I didn't even get to ask you about Dorian Gray yet. Can you just whip in there what you're doing with Dorian Gray? Because I love that also.

Arvind Ethan David: 51:05

I've always loved I love Oscar Wilde, and who doesn't? But what interested me about Dorian Gray is it's sort of a parable of what happens when you remove consequences. There's what happens to someone where you give them power to do whatever they want, and there are no consequences. Again, something that is completely irrelevant to our current moment.

Carolyn Daughters: 51:35

I was just thinking that.

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 51:38

But actually when I wrote it, which is a few years ago, it actually felt like that was changing. It was the height of the metoo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, and it felt like, oh, consequences are coming to America. That's interesting. And so I thought that might be an interesting time to write about a hero, a sort of antihero, who didn't suffer consequences, but I thought what would be. And of course, part of the importance of the original Dorian Gray is that it is also a coded story about homosexuality and but I felt it had done that. It had done that amazingly and importantly, and has had many versions of it that do that. I asked a different question. I asked question, what would happen if Dorian was a woman? How do we treat women who act without a sense of consequences? Do we treat them differently than the way we treat men? How do we treat a woman who claims to be debauched and enjoy debauchery without guilt or judgment? So my Dorian is a woman who has had something terrible happen to her in her college days, but that terrible thing gives her this gift or curse of eternal youth and of freedom from consequences, and she spends the rest of her life plotting her revenge against the world, which has made a way, apparently, I have a type of type in a way. She, she and Harriet Huntress share some, share some DNA, except Dorians. Revenge is larger and more societal. And she tries to take on, she tries to change America back into a land of consequences, and does she succeed or fail? Only, only the reader will know.

Sarah Harrison: 53:29

I'm excited to read this is super fascinating. I love the way you take these classic works and just go into the space, unravel them a little bit more, take curious journeys with them.

Arvind Ethan David: 53:46

It is because I have absolutely no original idea.

Sarah Harrison: 53:51

Clearly, clearly.

Arvind Ethan David: 53:54

It has been a very joyous, not entirely conscious decision, but it seems to have become that, which is to go back to the things I loved that formed me as a reader, and to say, Okay, what do I have to bring to them as a writer? At some point, I guess I'll run out of the stuff that I read as a kid.

Carolyn Daughters: 54:18

That won't happen. There's some you read, I'm sure, voraciously, like there's endless numbers of projects, and then, because you were bored and had nothing else to do, you decided to take on Jagged Little Pill.

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 54:34

I started my career in theater, and had strayed away from it for a long time in film and TV and comics and other things, but I'm a big believer that the story determines its form. And so one day, I've been thinking for a while about jukebox musicals and why most of them are terrible. And I love musicals, and I love pop the. Sake. But often, when you combine the two, you don't get anything good. You get, occasionally, a good biopic, like Tina Turner or Ray Charles. Obviously Walk the Line is amazing. But if you're not doing a biopic, often you get silly froth. You get Mamma Mia or escape from Margaritaville, not serious works of drama. But I thought, there has to be a way. And then one day, Alanis Morissette and I are almost exactly the same age, and I remember Jagged Little Pill coming out at college and going, Oh, my God, she's 19, and she just did this, and it's a landmark album, and it stayed with me. And listening to it, this will sound made up, but it's true. In the shower one day, I went, Oh, there's a narrative in it. There is a way to use its themes and preoccupations and create a proper story about some big ideas. And because of what those big ideas were, I was pleased I had the idea, but also very clear that I wasn't the right writer for it, and I also, at that point, had never worked on Broadway and hadn't done anything in theater for 15 years or something. And so I called Diablo Cody and pitched her on the beginnings of this idea, only the very loose beginnings. And because she's a genius, she saw how to make it something extraordinary, and my limited contribution was to put her and Alanis Morissette in the same room and sit back. And out of that came Jagged Little Pill, the musical.

Carolyn Daughters: 56:57

Amazing. A very formative album for me as well. I don't know, Sarah, if you feel the same?

Sarah Harrison: 57:04

I wouldn't say it was formative for me, but I

Carolyn Daughters: 57:08

For me also, you know, years and years ago, do enjoy it. and then now, when I hear Alanis Morissette's music and Jagged Little Pill, I think about it differently than I did many years ago. And so some songs that I had written off as just sort of frothy, I really love now. It's interesting how the passage of time hasn't eroded my love of her album, but it's actually increased it. It's almost unexpected, but I really just think she's amazing.

Sarah Harrison: 57:40

Awesome, and you've been an amazing guest. I know we could talk to you forever, and hopefully we get the chance to have you on more in the future.

Carolyn Daughters: 57:48

You have so many projects we're just going to have you on, I don't know, maybe like every two weeks. Figure out a schedule. It'll be good if

Arvind Ethan David - Trouble Is My Business: 57:59

If it's too frequent, I won't have time to write.

Sarah Harrison: 58:02

Right?

Arvind Ethan David: 58:05

We'll space it happy all just in the background, right?

Carolyn Daughters: 58:11

And then periodically, we're going to hear you pipe in with something like that was actually 1942 not 1941. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Arvind Ethan David: 58:24

No, thank you. Sarah and Carolyn, this has been enormous fun, and I look forward to not watching it.

Sarah Harrison: 58:35

Just forward it to your friends. Thanks, Arvind!

Arvind Ethan David: 58:40

Thanks, you guys, take care. Bye, bye.

Sarah Harrison: 58:43

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Carolyn Daughters: 59:06

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Sarah Harrison: 59:30

We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.