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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.

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THE BIG SLEEP (1939) is a seminal work in the hardboiled detective genre, and it’s among the best of the Raymond Chandler books. It showcases Chandler’s masterful use of sharp dialogue, complex characters and his gritty depiction of 1930s Los Angeles.

This classic hardboiled detective novel introduces private eye Philip Marlowe. Hired to resolve a blackmail scheme, Marlowe uncovers a web of corruption and murder. It revolutionized crime fiction, establishing a template for noir storytelling that continues to influence literature and film.

Get your book here! Or Anthony's annotated version here!
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
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Pulp Magazines and Black Mask

English detective stories “are too contrived, and too little aware of what goes on in the world. … The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody thought of only two minutes before he pulled it off. But if the writers of this fiction wrote about the kind of murders that happen, they would also have to write about the authentic flavor of life as it is lived.” (The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler)

Pulp magazines (printed on wood-pulp paper) were a cheap source of popular entertainment that sometimes mixed in subversive social commentary. The format was invented in 1882 as a vehicle for children’s adventure stories. By the 1920s, pulps specialized in detective stories, love stories, westerns, …. During the Depression, they provided a sense of escape. [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]

“In 1931 my wife and I used to cruise up and down the Pacific Coast in a very leisurely way, and at night, just to have something to read, I would pick a pulp magazine off the rack. It suddenly struck me that I might be able to write this stuff and get paid while I was learning.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]

“It took me a year to write my first story. I had to … learn to write all over again.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]

The emotional basis of the standard detective story had always been that justice will be done. Its technical basis was the relative insignificance of everything except the final denouement. What led up to that was more or less passagework. The denouement justified everything. (Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler)

The technical basis of the Black Mask type of story, however, was that the scene outranked the plot. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing. (Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler)

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https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...

Send us a text

THE BIG SLEEP (1939) is a seminal work in the hardboiled detective genre, and it’s among the best of the Raymond Chandler books. It showcases Chandler’s masterful use of sharp dialogue, complex characters and his gritty depiction of 1930s Los Angeles.

This classic hardboiled detective novel introduces private eye Philip Marlowe. Hired to resolve a blackmail scheme, Marlowe uncovers a web of corruption and murder. It revolutionized crime fiction, establishing a template for noir storytelling that continues to influence literature and film.

Get your book here! Or Anthony's annotated version here!
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
Join our Patreon community here! It's free to join, with extra perks for members at every level.

Here are some questions and discussion starters here. Also – we want to hear from YOU! Share your thoughts, and we may just include them in our upcoming episodes!

Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler Books)

Marlowe is 33 and went to college once. He’s a bit of a cynic, and his manners are bad. He was fired for insubordination. “I test very high on insubordination.”

American hero: “Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious” (NYT Book Review).

Prometheus: “Marlowe is Prometheus [of American myth]: the noble outsider, sacrificing and enduring for a code he alone upholds.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]

Honest: Vivian asks if Marlowe is honest. “Painfully,” he says. He tells Carmen he has “professional pride.” Her father trusts him not to “pull any stunts.”

Tough Guy: He’s tough, clever, and a good judge of character. His speech is brash and witty.

Self-Destructive streak? “I had concealed a murder and suppressed evidence for twenty-four hours, but I was still at large and had a five-hundred-dollar check coming. The smart thing for me to do was to take another drink and forget the whole mess. That being the obviously smart thing to do, I called Eddie Mars and told him I was coming … That was how smart I was” (ch. 21).

Catalyst: There are the aficionados of deduction and the aficionados of sex who can’t get it into their hot little heads that the fictional detective is a catalyst, not a Casanova. (Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler)

Dashiell Hammett’s Influence on the Raymond Chandler Books

The famous Detection Club: “Its roster includes practically every important writer of detective fiction since Conan Doyle. But Graves and Hodge decided that only one first-class writer had written detective stories at all. An American, Dashiell Hammett. … Graves and Hodge were not fuddy-duddy connoisseurs of the second-rate; they … were aware that writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction.” (The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler)

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