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Philip Marlowe #8
دردسر، حرفه ی من است
سال نشر: 1374
عنوان فرعی: چهار داستان کارآگاهی از ریموند چندلر
شامل داستان های 1) دردسر، حرفه ی من است؛ 2) انگشت اتهام؛ 3) طلاماهی؛ 4) باد سرخ
عنوان فرعی: چهار داستان کارآگاهی از ریموند چندلر
شامل داستان های 1) دردسر، حرفه ی من است؛ 2) انگشت اتهام؛ 3) طلاماهی؛ 4) باد سرخ
352 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1950
879 people are currently reading
9871 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,601 followersRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 528 reviews
July 1, 2017
Yes yes yes! Not one, but four stories with Philip Marlowe at the lead. I think Raymond Chandler is superb; his descriptions have me drooling and in my opinion he's the original hard boiled, film noir detective. I love him and every move he makes. He's witty, dry, sarcastic and dangerous. I can picture myself walking the streets at night with him, slugging a bad guy with a gun and swigging scotch in the middle of the night in a stifling hot hotel room whilst hiding from a crook. He's just an awesome character and Chandler makes him.
January 27, 2021
To quote the man himself, Raymond Chandler’s stories are like alcohol, which is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second intimate, the third routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.
I’ve read enough that I’ve reached a point where reading Raymond Chandler is like returning to a neighborhood bar you’ve haunted every Friday for more years than is worth counting.
You don’t expect magic. You don’t expect excitement or novelty. In fact, it is the familiarity and routine that draw you back. All the little details - the stain on the bar that has taken up permanent residence, say, or the regular who sits at the end of the bar and drinks exactly one and a half beers before leaving - imbue the place with a personal character, such that your mind has begun to consider it an actual friend.
Chandler’s style, which I once found sharp and exciting, is now old hat, and his plot structures are similar enough to please even the most tyrannical home-owner’s association. It’s all a bit like owning ten slightly different copies of a treasure map that lead to the same treasure.
But then, I don’t expect magic or novelty or excitement. The pleasure of reading is still there. It’s just different. The small changes in style and plot become tremendously exciting. Like if that beer-and-a-half regular brought a lady friend one evening. A new patron wouldn’t even notice it. Wouldn’t know why it mattered. But us regulars would understand its significance.
And Chandler’s Philip Marlowe remains largely unparalleled, mostly because so many imitation anti-heroes miss the point. It’s not his toughness, his perception, or his sarcastic wit that make the character. It’s the rare - but consistent - acts of kindness. Despite all the venality and vice of the world, he manages to keep one hand - one pinky, even - above the muck.
I’ve read enough that I’ve reached a point where reading Raymond Chandler is like returning to a neighborhood bar you’ve haunted every Friday for more years than is worth counting.
You don’t expect magic. You don’t expect excitement or novelty. In fact, it is the familiarity and routine that draw you back. All the little details - the stain on the bar that has taken up permanent residence, say, or the regular who sits at the end of the bar and drinks exactly one and a half beers before leaving - imbue the place with a personal character, such that your mind has begun to consider it an actual friend.
Chandler’s style, which I once found sharp and exciting, is now old hat, and his plot structures are similar enough to please even the most tyrannical home-owner’s association. It’s all a bit like owning ten slightly different copies of a treasure map that lead to the same treasure.
But then, I don’t expect magic or novelty or excitement. The pleasure of reading is still there. It’s just different. The small changes in style and plot become tremendously exciting. Like if that beer-and-a-half regular brought a lady friend one evening. A new patron wouldn’t even notice it. Wouldn’t know why it mattered. But us regulars would understand its significance.
And Chandler’s Philip Marlowe remains largely unparalleled, mostly because so many imitation anti-heroes miss the point. It’s not his toughness, his perception, or his sarcastic wit that make the character. It’s the rare - but consistent - acts of kindness. Despite all the venality and vice of the world, he manages to keep one hand - one pinky, even - above the muck.
July 4, 2023
Four stories. Trouble Is My Business and Finger Man are both top notch hardboiled pulp fiction. Goldfish is about pearls and goldfish, and it comes off a little Dick Tracey-ish, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's a nice switch in tone for Chandler.
The final story, Red Wind, knocked my socks off. The plot is more intricate, and every piece of the puzzle is building on the last, to the point that a couple of times I had to stop and check on what I'd read previously. The hardboiled lines hit a bit harder, too. But it's more than just a detective story. It rises above it's genre to become literature. In fact, the reason I picked up the book is because Eric Williams, author of Toadstones, tweeted that: Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind" is legitimately one of the greatest short stories of the 20th c, both technically and artistically. dialog, pacing, description, story, all perfect, and the whole thing culminates in a genuinely (and surprisingly) moving last couple of paragraphs. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Some of my favourite hardboiled lines threaded here.
The final story, Red Wind, knocked my socks off. The plot is more intricate, and every piece of the puzzle is building on the last, to the point that a couple of times I had to stop and check on what I'd read previously. The hardboiled lines hit a bit harder, too. But it's more than just a detective story. It rises above it's genre to become literature. In fact, the reason I picked up the book is because Eric Williams, author of Toadstones, tweeted that: Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind" is legitimately one of the greatest short stories of the 20th c, both technically and artistically. dialog, pacing, description, story, all perfect, and the whole thing culminates in a genuinely (and surprisingly) moving last couple of paragraphs. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Some of my favourite hardboiled lines threaded here.
May 26, 2017
I bought this after reading reviews by my Goodreads friend, author James Thane. These old potboiler detective stories are so good!
* * * * *
Ha ha ha! What a delightful little book. The plot is secondary to the dialogue of Philip Marlowe and the other hardboiled characters, to wit:
"I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest."
"I moved around slowly, like a cat in a strange house. . ."
"The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume."
"Miss Harriet Huntress was a nice girl. She knew a few wrong numbers, but who didn't?"
"So long, pal. Be pure." [I'm stealing this one for my own parting line!]
"I felt terrible. I felt like an amputated leg."
"George slid under the wheel and started the big car. It moved away from the curb and around the corner with as much noise as a bill makes in a wallet."
"They rode me back into the room without seeming to."
"He had an idea and he was holding it like a sick baby."
"'Lift the dogs,' [move your butt] Beef said, and stood to one side."
The iconic line: "'Trouble is my business,' I said. 'How else would I make a nickel?'"
"I lifted a foot to start walking to a taxi half a block down across the street."
"The night air was not pure but it was cool."
* * * * *
Ha ha ha! What a delightful little book. The plot is secondary to the dialogue of Philip Marlowe and the other hardboiled characters, to wit:
"I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest."
"I moved around slowly, like a cat in a strange house. . ."
"The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume."
"Miss Harriet Huntress was a nice girl. She knew a few wrong numbers, but who didn't?"
"So long, pal. Be pure." [I'm stealing this one for my own parting line!]
"I felt terrible. I felt like an amputated leg."
"George slid under the wheel and started the big car. It moved away from the curb and around the corner with as much noise as a bill makes in a wallet."
"They rode me back into the room without seeming to."
"He had an idea and he was holding it like a sick baby."
"'Lift the dogs,' [move your butt] Beef said, and stood to one side."
The iconic line: "'Trouble is my business,' I said. 'How else would I make a nickel?'"
"I lifted a foot to start walking to a taxi half a block down across the street."
"The night air was not pure but it was cool."
June 17, 2024
4 Stars. "Trouble is My Business," is the title story of four short stories in a 1950 collection. This is a review of that story - not the book! It first saw the light of day in 1939 in the pulp magazine, "Dime Detective." At 58 pages, it's actually a novelette. Featured is that quintessential hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe, although the original entry starred John Dalmas. He is hired to persuade a questionable woman and probable fortune hunter, Harriet Huntress, to stay away from an impressionable young man, Gerald Jeeter. Chandler even has one of the characters add that Huntress is "a swell name for the part." The son will come into a fortune in a few years. Questions galore. It's an agency which hires Marlowe; is old man Jeeter the ultimate client or someone else? Who is trying to bump Marlowe off? Who is behind the two gunmen he unfortunately encounters? A few dead bodies later, Marlowe clears up the confusion. If you are anything like me, you'll need to read the first chapter twice, just to comprehend enough of the street slang between Marlowe and Anna Halsey who would like to hire him! I had a fun ride. (July 2020)
March 28, 2009
I think a review of the book would be pointless. Just know that this is one of the true headwaters of the River Noir.
Anyone who reads Chandler would be well served to get a copy containing Chandler's own introduction (written around 1950) where he looks back at the pulps - which he refers to in the past tense even though they had about 10 more years left in them fighting for rack space -and discusses the transformation of the genre from the mostly British in style iterations to the fully Americanized versions and why that happened and what was gained.
It's one of those very rare moments where you can see that even though Chandler occasionally lost the pure whodunit thread once or twice in his own work he knew exactly what his style was about and what he was doing within the genre in the moment and not just as a series of insights looking back on it all.
To me that one introduction, and precisely WHEN he wrote it in the context of the history of noir fiction, seals the deal and makes Chandler essential.
Anyone who reads Chandler would be well served to get a copy containing Chandler's own introduction (written around 1950) where he looks back at the pulps - which he refers to in the past tense even though they had about 10 more years left in them fighting for rack space -and discusses the transformation of the genre from the mostly British in style iterations to the fully Americanized versions and why that happened and what was gained.
It's one of those very rare moments where you can see that even though Chandler occasionally lost the pure whodunit thread once or twice in his own work he knew exactly what his style was about and what he was doing within the genre in the moment and not just as a series of insights looking back on it all.
To me that one introduction, and precisely WHEN he wrote it in the context of the history of noir fiction, seals the deal and makes Chandler essential.
June 7, 2019
This is a collection of 5 short stories from Raymond Chandler. It is identified as a part of the Philip Marlowe series, and other reviews identify the stories as all being about Marlowe. My copy however (1950 Penguin) contains a note which says "The stories in this volume first appeared in various magazines between 1933 and 1939..." and I suspect the characters names in my edition are the original, and have subsequently been republished as Marlowe.
Trouble is my Business (John Dalmas) 5/5
Red Wind (John Dalmas) 4/5
I'll be Waiting (Tony Reseck) 3/5
Goldfish (Carmady) 4.5/5
Guns at Cyrano's (Ted Malvern) 4/5
I am not a big fan of plot outlining short stories - it doesn't leave much out there.
Suffice it to say they are in Chandler's style. Tough guy private detectives, who make the usual mistakes, but come out all right in the end, typically surrounded with bodies! They are the hard-boiled detectives in the mold of Marlowe, whatever name is used.
Excellent. Overall 4 stars+
Trouble is my Business (John Dalmas) 5/5
Red Wind (John Dalmas) 4/5
I'll be Waiting (Tony Reseck) 3/5
Goldfish (Carmady) 4.5/5
Guns at Cyrano's (Ted Malvern) 4/5
I am not a big fan of plot outlining short stories - it doesn't leave much out there.
Suffice it to say they are in Chandler's style. Tough guy private detectives, who make the usual mistakes, but come out all right in the end, typically surrounded with bodies! They are the hard-boiled detectives in the mold of Marlowe, whatever name is used.
Excellent. Overall 4 stars+
January 17, 2024
01/2018
Four Pulp magazine novellas. Only one, Red Wind, had I read before. My favorite here is Goldfish (though it does contain some bad fish abuse). The introduction, writing about pulp writing, was done by Chandler in 1950.
Four Pulp magazine novellas. Only one, Red Wind, had I read before. My favorite here is Goldfish (though it does contain some bad fish abuse). The introduction, writing about pulp writing, was done by Chandler in 1950.
October 19, 2019
There's a lot of top notch story packed in these tasty little packages. Compared to Chandler's full length stories they're a bit short on Marlowe's sharply insightful and often somber self-reflections, but that's to be expected in a shorter format. Highly recommended for Chandler fans, but also a good place to start for those new to his masterful ministrations.
Trouble is My Business (4.0) - A few too many tenuous plot strands and twists made this more difficult to follow than it should have been.
Finger Man (4.0) - A departure from typical Marlowe story lines as he's directly involved in this as a key witness to a murder, with no client to speak of. Also, a bit unusual, there's someone he actually considers a friend (who knew!) and receives some cooperation from the law, who he's usually at odds with to some extent.
Goldfish (5.0) - Marlowe sets out to recover some stolen pearls, on a kind of a treasure hunt, albeit a deadly one. A few too many convenient coincidences, but an excellent story that's quite a bit outside the usual murder / blackmail noir stories.
Red Wind (5.0) - Another departure that starts with Marlowe as a witness to a cold blooded murder, and then sees him gets mixed up with a femme fatale and some bad seeds in a blackmailing scheme gone very wrong.
Trouble is My Business (4.0) - A few too many tenuous plot strands and twists made this more difficult to follow than it should have been.
Finger Man (4.0) - A departure from typical Marlowe story lines as he's directly involved in this as a key witness to a murder, with no client to speak of. Also, a bit unusual, there's someone he actually considers a friend (who knew!) and receives some cooperation from the law, who he's usually at odds with to some extent.
Goldfish (5.0) - Marlowe sets out to recover some stolen pearls, on a kind of a treasure hunt, albeit a deadly one. A few too many convenient coincidences, but an excellent story that's quite a bit outside the usual murder / blackmail noir stories.
Red Wind (5.0) - Another departure that starts with Marlowe as a witness to a cold blooded murder, and then sees him gets mixed up with a femme fatale and some bad seeds in a blackmailing scheme gone very wrong.
October 27, 2023
4 Stars. A collection of four novellas and novelettes, two each. The book came out in 1950 and includes the title story, along with "The Finger Man," "Goldfish," and "Red Wind." Each is reviewed elsewhere. This is about the collection. Get ready for gambling, fast women, political corruption, theft, con artists, murder, and action galore in the under-belly of Los Angeles. Noir and hard-boiled mystery - par excellence! The stories originally had other private detectives as their lead characters, but Chandler brought them under the Philip Marlowe rubric when the collection was published. His stand alone Marlowe novels had become very popular. There's no evidence that Chandler's other P.I.s like John Dalmas, Carmady, or Mallory were any different in characterization than brother Marlowe. Same character, new name! Marlowe's a thinker, not a guy with a gun who shoots first and considers it all later; he does seem to find himself surrounded by women of all types, some savoury and some the opposite. Often with men who can't be found except in dark and smoke-filled rooms. He's one of my great reading discoveries! (August 2020)
November 2, 2023
One of the best from the series.
Good dialogues, the usual touch of humor, the same twisted plot and the detective gets the lady. Unfortunately, not for too long...
Good dialogues, the usual touch of humor, the same twisted plot and the detective gets the lady. Unfortunately, not for too long...
December 9, 2016
نمره ی واقعی: سه و نیم
من داستان باد سرخ رو بیشتر دوست داشتم. بقیه اشم جالب بود اما جاهایی آدم حس می کرد یه ماسمالی هایی هست. در کل خوندنی بود
مترجم یه مقدمه هم در مورد فضای گنگستری آمریکا در چند دهه ی اول قرن بیستم و تأثیرش بر شکل گیری رمان کارآگاهی آمریکایی نوشته که هر چند جزئیات زیادی نداره اما خوبه خوندنش. ترجمه هم من باهاش مشکلی نداشتم و یادم نمی آد وقتایی که سراغ اصلش می رفتم اشتباه خاصی به چشمم اومده باشه
June 11, 2018
Raymond Chandler and I don't always have a happy relationship when his novels are put into consideration. I DNF-ed more of his books than managed to finish them in the past. I have to admit Mr. Chandler had a terrific way with writing, his dialogues and his tone are always charming and witty, but his stories can always be a struggle to get through.
Now, with his short stories collection Trouble Is My Business mostly because these are all short stories so it takes Mr. Chandler's famous main character: private investigator Philip Marlowe in L.A. , a lot faster to get into action and solve the murder mystery than usual. I think the fast pacing does help a lot for me to go over these stories.
I just love the noir atmosphere which Mr. Chandler created with seemingly little to no effort! Plus much to my surprise, I notice Mr. Chandler's stories and his MC seem to be a bit more...romantic than I would have expected from an author who is so well known for his 'dark and gritty' hard boiled novels!
Last but not least, I really like the world of noir Mr. Chandler had created: dangerous men and equally dangerous women, scums and criminals, everyone has their eyes on the money, everyone and their mothers are all pointing a gun at other people (how typically American!) and the tough-guy PI (Marlowe) always. gotten. beat. up. and. knocked. unconscious. in. every. single. story. LOL
PS: I really like thefemme fatale tough-as-nail female character in the first story, I like her because she didn't get demonized for her sexuality, her way of life and her greed for the gold; let's face it, almost everyone in the stories are greedy and selfish as fuck, so there is no point singling out women for behaving the same like their male counterparts.
Now, with his short stories collection Trouble Is My Business mostly because these are all short stories so it takes Mr. Chandler's famous main character: private investigator Philip Marlowe in L.A. , a lot faster to get into action and solve the murder mystery than usual. I think the fast pacing does help a lot for me to go over these stories.
I just love the noir atmosphere which Mr. Chandler created with seemingly little to no effort! Plus much to my surprise, I notice Mr. Chandler's stories and his MC seem to be a bit more...romantic than I would have expected from an author who is so well known for his 'dark and gritty' hard boiled novels!
Last but not least, I really like the world of noir Mr. Chandler had created: dangerous men and equally dangerous women, scums and criminals, everyone has their eyes on the money, everyone and their mothers are all pointing a gun at other people (how typically American!) and the tough-guy PI (Marlowe) always. gotten. beat. up. and. knocked. unconscious. in. every. single. story. LOL
PS: I really like the
March 20, 2015
3.5 stars.
It took me a few years living in Georgia to realize just how much California is in my bones. I grew up a Midwesterner but then spent 14 crucial years – 1995-2009, or age 22 to 36 – on the West Coast. I never made a conscious decision to self-identify as a Californian, but after living in the Atlanta area for a couple years I suddenly realized just how much my time in California had shaped my personality. And now, even though I’ve been in the South for nearly six years, no author takes me back to Los Angeles like Raymond Chandler. When he writes, “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch,” I immediately think, I know that wind! Even though he’s writing about 1930’s L.A., I read his work and immediately return to late-night Santa Barbara streets, driving home after a show, the marine layer rolling in to slick my arm hanging out the open window and ghost a hazy nimbus around the amber streetlights. The state still haunts me, but under Chandler’s influence it’s not an unwelcome possession.
Although I feel pretty firmly that Elmore Leonard is the undisputed master of crime fiction and, more narrowly, James Ellroy has cornered the market on a certain adrenalized, bare-knuckle strain of Los Angeles noir, it’s impossible not to see Chandler as the Rosetta Stone of the modern detective story, with Leonard and Ellroy and Rankin and Lehane and Hiaasen all tracing their lineage back to Chandler’s pitch-black tales of Philip Marlowe and the street-smart broads with whom he associates.
It’s been a long time since I last read Chandler – probably fifteen years or more since I closed The Long Goodbye – and the first paragraph of the title story in Trouble Is My Business is just like sinking into a warm bath:
"Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-aged putty-faced woman in a black tailor-made suit. Her eyes were shiny black shoe buttons, her cheeks were as soft as suet and about the same color. She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon’s tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. She said: ‘I need a man.’"
For my money there’s nothing not to like about that passage, and the rest of the four stories in this collection are just as razor-sharp. If I’m going to be honest, though, the actual plot mechanics are almost beside the point. Chandler admits as much in a forward to the collection, where he says there’s no such thing as a classic mystery story because the only thing that really matters is the denouement, where everything is revealed, and everything that comes before is just process to get to the conclusion. So to that end – and I’ll come back to the kinda sorta problematic denouement theory in a sec – the stories in this collection are composed of more or less interchangeable parts:
• Private eye Philip Marlowe as the world-weary narrator
• A con involving money (two stories) or pearls (two stories)
• A brassy dame with a gun
• A scene where Marlowe gets hit in the back of the head with a sap
• Two wise-cracking bad guys, one of whom might be garrulous and charismatic, the other taciturn and sullen, and only one of them will be a good shot
• The mastermind of the con who isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is
• A Los Angeles cop who reluctantly lets Marlowe go about his business
• One or more scenes involving scotch or rye, which may or may not be set in a bar
• Rapid-fire exchanges of dialogue where Marlowe says things like, “Some days I feel like playing smooth and some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.”
None of this is criticism, mind you. The reason Chandler is so good is that he mixes and matches all these pieces and manages to put them together in novel and exciting ways each time. In one story it’s about a guy who cheats a local mob boss out of $20,000; in another, Marlowe tracks some missing pearls to the Pacific Northwest. Even though we recognize the parts, the thrill is in seeing how Chandler repurposes them from story to story. Everything in this collection crackles with electricity.
Everything, that is, except for the denouement Chandler references, the part of the story he views as most vital to its success. This is the only thing in Trouble Is My Business that feels antiquated: the scene where all the principal players are gathered in one room and Marlowe explains the nuts and bolts of everything that’s come before. It’s a variation on what Roger Ebert called The Fallacy of the Talking Killer. You know that tired scene from movies – where the bad guy has the good guy trapped and all he has to do is kill him but he spends five minutes explaining why he’s so bad and then the good guy escapes. It’s kind of the same thing here, where Marlowe has to explain the contortions of the plot so we’ll see everything the way he sees it. It’s a scene that I don’t really see in modern crime fiction, and in these stories it’s always necessary (Chandler is big on convoluted plots), but it also grinds the story to a halt.
But again, I don’t really mean this as criticism. It’s an early hallmark of the genre Chandler essentially invented (yes yes, I know – Poe, Doyle, Christie, etc., etc. I’m talking contemporary crime fiction here), and by pointing it out I don’t want to dissuade anyone from reading what is an unequivocally delightful collection of stories. It’s one of those rare occasions where I don’t mind substance taking a back seat to style. Chandler’s not going to make me ponder the meaning of the universe, but he will dazzle me with sheer inventiveness of craft. And of course take me back to California, where gravel roads disappear “around a shoulder of scrub oak and manzanita” and “plumes of pampas grass flare on the side of the hill, like jets of water.”
I wasn’t born in California, but reading Chandler is like going home.
Read all my reviews at goldstarforrobotboy.net
It took me a few years living in Georgia to realize just how much California is in my bones. I grew up a Midwesterner but then spent 14 crucial years – 1995-2009, or age 22 to 36 – on the West Coast. I never made a conscious decision to self-identify as a Californian, but after living in the Atlanta area for a couple years I suddenly realized just how much my time in California had shaped my personality. And now, even though I’ve been in the South for nearly six years, no author takes me back to Los Angeles like Raymond Chandler. When he writes, “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch,” I immediately think, I know that wind! Even though he’s writing about 1930’s L.A., I read his work and immediately return to late-night Santa Barbara streets, driving home after a show, the marine layer rolling in to slick my arm hanging out the open window and ghost a hazy nimbus around the amber streetlights. The state still haunts me, but under Chandler’s influence it’s not an unwelcome possession.
Although I feel pretty firmly that Elmore Leonard is the undisputed master of crime fiction and, more narrowly, James Ellroy has cornered the market on a certain adrenalized, bare-knuckle strain of Los Angeles noir, it’s impossible not to see Chandler as the Rosetta Stone of the modern detective story, with Leonard and Ellroy and Rankin and Lehane and Hiaasen all tracing their lineage back to Chandler’s pitch-black tales of Philip Marlowe and the street-smart broads with whom he associates.
It’s been a long time since I last read Chandler – probably fifteen years or more since I closed The Long Goodbye – and the first paragraph of the title story in Trouble Is My Business is just like sinking into a warm bath:
"Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-aged putty-faced woman in a black tailor-made suit. Her eyes were shiny black shoe buttons, her cheeks were as soft as suet and about the same color. She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon’s tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. She said: ‘I need a man.’"
For my money there’s nothing not to like about that passage, and the rest of the four stories in this collection are just as razor-sharp. If I’m going to be honest, though, the actual plot mechanics are almost beside the point. Chandler admits as much in a forward to the collection, where he says there’s no such thing as a classic mystery story because the only thing that really matters is the denouement, where everything is revealed, and everything that comes before is just process to get to the conclusion. So to that end – and I’ll come back to the kinda sorta problematic denouement theory in a sec – the stories in this collection are composed of more or less interchangeable parts:
• Private eye Philip Marlowe as the world-weary narrator
• A con involving money (two stories) or pearls (two stories)
• A brassy dame with a gun
• A scene where Marlowe gets hit in the back of the head with a sap
• Two wise-cracking bad guys, one of whom might be garrulous and charismatic, the other taciturn and sullen, and only one of them will be a good shot
• The mastermind of the con who isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is
• A Los Angeles cop who reluctantly lets Marlowe go about his business
• One or more scenes involving scotch or rye, which may or may not be set in a bar
• Rapid-fire exchanges of dialogue where Marlowe says things like, “Some days I feel like playing smooth and some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.”
None of this is criticism, mind you. The reason Chandler is so good is that he mixes and matches all these pieces and manages to put them together in novel and exciting ways each time. In one story it’s about a guy who cheats a local mob boss out of $20,000; in another, Marlowe tracks some missing pearls to the Pacific Northwest. Even though we recognize the parts, the thrill is in seeing how Chandler repurposes them from story to story. Everything in this collection crackles with electricity.
Everything, that is, except for the denouement Chandler references, the part of the story he views as most vital to its success. This is the only thing in Trouble Is My Business that feels antiquated: the scene where all the principal players are gathered in one room and Marlowe explains the nuts and bolts of everything that’s come before. It’s a variation on what Roger Ebert called The Fallacy of the Talking Killer. You know that tired scene from movies – where the bad guy has the good guy trapped and all he has to do is kill him but he spends five minutes explaining why he’s so bad and then the good guy escapes. It’s kind of the same thing here, where Marlowe has to explain the contortions of the plot so we’ll see everything the way he sees it. It’s a scene that I don’t really see in modern crime fiction, and in these stories it’s always necessary (Chandler is big on convoluted plots), but it also grinds the story to a halt.
But again, I don’t really mean this as criticism. It’s an early hallmark of the genre Chandler essentially invented (yes yes, I know – Poe, Doyle, Christie, etc., etc. I’m talking contemporary crime fiction here), and by pointing it out I don’t want to dissuade anyone from reading what is an unequivocally delightful collection of stories. It’s one of those rare occasions where I don’t mind substance taking a back seat to style. Chandler’s not going to make me ponder the meaning of the universe, but he will dazzle me with sheer inventiveness of craft. And of course take me back to California, where gravel roads disappear “around a shoulder of scrub oak and manzanita” and “plumes of pampas grass flare on the side of the hill, like jets of water.”
I wasn’t born in California, but reading Chandler is like going home.
Read all my reviews at goldstarforrobotboy.net
May 13, 2025
”As I look back on my stories, it would be absurd if I did not wish my stories had been better, but if they had been much better, they would not have been published.”
~Raymond Chandler, from the Introduction
A collection of shorter Philip Marlowe tales. Red Wind is worth the purchase price all by itself.
Trouble Is My Business
”He wasn’t anything to see. He was just a little man who was dead with a big slug in his face and blood on him.”
Marlowe is hired to get rid of a dame who is working a rich man’s drunken son, but as in most of his cases, murder pops up almost immediately in a case where it shouldn’t. Marlowe has his usual hard luck, while showing less competence than usual, and drinking quite a bit more. A nasty, rich, skinflint client, an opportunist house dick, a couple of bozo hoods, a pair of world weary cops, and a dangerous chauffeur make up the balance of the cast. And, as usual, Marlowe seems to be catnip for the ladies.
3 ⭐️
Finger Man
Marlowe is simultaneously involved in a case of political corruption (he’s a prime witness) and a fixed roulette wheel caper involving a gambler friend of his and a mysterious dame. The friend ends up dead, the mystery lady in the wind, and Marlowe framed for the murder. He’s left trying to clear his name and avenge his friend. A Persian cat plays a key role (nice touch)
4 ⭐️
Goldfish
Marlowe’s on a deadly treasure hunt in this one, following thin leads in search of pearls stolen nineteen years before. There’s still a $25,000 reward out from the insurance company. But Marlowe has deadly competition in the hunt, from a pair of chiselers willing to maim and kill for the prize. As usual, the story works up a body count, but Marlowe doesn’t lip lock with any dames for a change.
4 ⭐️
Red Wind
”I don’t like being a witness. The pay’s too low.”
”He smiled at me. It was a lousy smile to be the last one you might see.”
This one is the gem of the collection, and can stand proud beside Chandler’s best novels (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye). Marlowe is an eyewitness to a barroom murder, and the murderer is out to silence him. Along the way Marlowe is drawn into intrigue that involves double blackmail, a pair of cops (one each of the nasty and solid varieties) and a classy dame in trouble. This tale displays the sadness, sensitivity, and essential decency just below the surface of Marlowe’s hard boiled edge.
5 ⭐️
~Raymond Chandler, from the Introduction
A collection of shorter Philip Marlowe tales. Red Wind is worth the purchase price all by itself.
Trouble Is My Business
”He wasn’t anything to see. He was just a little man who was dead with a big slug in his face and blood on him.”
Marlowe is hired to get rid of a dame who is working a rich man’s drunken son, but as in most of his cases, murder pops up almost immediately in a case where it shouldn’t. Marlowe has his usual hard luck, while showing less competence than usual, and drinking quite a bit more. A nasty, rich, skinflint client, an opportunist house dick, a couple of bozo hoods, a pair of world weary cops, and a dangerous chauffeur make up the balance of the cast. And, as usual, Marlowe seems to be catnip for the ladies.
3 ⭐️
Finger Man
Marlowe is simultaneously involved in a case of political corruption (he’s a prime witness) and a fixed roulette wheel caper involving a gambler friend of his and a mysterious dame. The friend ends up dead, the mystery lady in the wind, and Marlowe framed for the murder. He’s left trying to clear his name and avenge his friend. A Persian cat plays a key role (nice touch)
4 ⭐️
Goldfish
Marlowe’s on a deadly treasure hunt in this one, following thin leads in search of pearls stolen nineteen years before. There’s still a $25,000 reward out from the insurance company. But Marlowe has deadly competition in the hunt, from a pair of chiselers willing to maim and kill for the prize. As usual, the story works up a body count, but Marlowe doesn’t lip lock with any dames for a change.
4 ⭐️
Red Wind
”I don’t like being a witness. The pay’s too low.”
”He smiled at me. It was a lousy smile to be the last one you might see.”
This one is the gem of the collection, and can stand proud beside Chandler’s best novels (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye). Marlowe is an eyewitness to a barroom murder, and the murderer is out to silence him. Along the way Marlowe is drawn into intrigue that involves double blackmail, a pair of cops (one each of the nasty and solid varieties) and a classy dame in trouble. This tale displays the sadness, sensitivity, and essential decency just below the surface of Marlowe’s hard boiled edge.
5 ⭐️
November 22, 2018
Of course I love this, it being a collection of four short stories which were later cannibalized for Chandler's novels, but I admit I wanted it to be longer. The Simple Art of Murder had more stories and a bit more variety, so I definitely prefer it to this, but still, this was a good selection of short stories. Almost nothing outside of Chandler's works makes me imagine scenes in my head so vividly, or to laugh out loud at the sarcasm. I pretty much was laughing every few minutes while reading this, and I'm writing the review after my second reading. No other noir can touch Chandler in my opinion, this being just the most perfect example of the genre.
July 8, 2020
For my money, the first and lasts stories are best, the second and third only for Chandler purists. This is early Chandler, and rough in many places, but you can see him polishing parts of the stories and developing his unique style.
1. Trouble is My Business - 3.5 Stars
The first story starts off a bit roughly and overwritten, but even in this early effort we can see the Chandler-to-be. Marvellous.
The tall one was grinning. He had his hat low on his forehead and he had a wedge-shaped face that ended in a point, like the bottom half of the ace of diamonds. He had dark moist eyes and a nose so bloodless that it might have been made of white wax. His gun was a Colt Woodsman with a long barrel and the front sight filed off. That meant he thought he was good.
Colt Woodsman again. This appears quite often in this collection.
Full size image here
Chandler's prose gets a bit tighter and smoother in Chapter 4, but the complex plot and characters are not yet "trademark" Chandler.
By chapter 7 we see most of the plot, but it still takes an info-dump by Marlowe to tie it all together.
All-in-all a delicious portent of better work to come.
2. Finger Man - 3 Stars
This scene in the casino and some of the parking lot reminds me almost exactly of the film version of The Big Sleep with John Ridley (Eddie Mars) and Lauren Bacall.
Note: ALSO - Much of the initial cottage-photography nude-girl session in Killer in the Rain seems have been lifted from there directly into the superb The Big Sleep film version of 1946, screenplay by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett
Two croupiers stood near me with their heads together and their eyes looking side-wise. One moved a rake slowly back and forth beside the idle wheel. They were staring at the red-haired girl.
She wore a high-cut black evening gown. She had fine white shoulders, was something less than beautiful and more than pretty. She was leaning on the edge of the table, in front of the wheel. Her long eyelashes were twitching. There was a big pile of money and chips in front of her.
The croupier leaned across the table and very carefully stacked her money and chips. He placed her bet for her on the red diamond. He placed his hand along the curve of the wheel.
“If no one objects,” Canales said, without looking at anyone, “this is just the two of us.”
Marlowe's gun, a long .38 with a six-inch barrel.
Full size image here
Unfortunately, the story bogs down in too many twists and false explanations.
3. Goldfish - 3.5 Stars
Better than the second, but barely. Uneven pacing, a confused plot, repetitive dialogue that doesn’t always ring true, but a neat ending.
4. Red Wind - 4.5 Stars
Once this story gets going, you know it's the real thing. Early Chandler, but pure and clean. Great complex plot, good pacing, and the prose mostly smooth and effortless. Wonderful.
Two beautiful quotes, indisputably Chandler:
The old Levantine had a shop on Melrose, a junk shop with everything in the window from a folding baby carriage to a French horn, from a mother-of-pearl lorgnette in a faded plush case to one of those .44 Special Single Action six-shooters they still make for Western peace officers whose grandfathers were tough.
and
I went out of the bar without looking back at her, got into my car and drove west on Sunset and down all the way to the Coast Highway. Everywhere along the way gardens were full of withered and blackened leaves and flowers which the hot wind had burned.
But the ocean looked cool and languid and just the same as ever. I drove on almost to Malibu and then parked and went and sat on a big rock that was inside somebody’s wire fence. It was about half-tide and coming in. The air smelled of kelp.
.
1. Trouble is My Business - 3.5 Stars
The first story starts off a bit roughly and overwritten, but even in this early effort we can see the Chandler-to-be. Marvellous.
The tall one was grinning. He had his hat low on his forehead and he had a wedge-shaped face that ended in a point, like the bottom half of the ace of diamonds. He had dark moist eyes and a nose so bloodless that it might have been made of white wax. His gun was a Colt Woodsman with a long barrel and the front sight filed off. That meant he thought he was good.
Colt Woodsman again. This appears quite often in this collection.
Full size image here
Chandler's prose gets a bit tighter and smoother in Chapter 4, but the complex plot and characters are not yet "trademark" Chandler.
By chapter 7 we see most of the plot, but it still takes an info-dump by Marlowe to tie it all together.
All-in-all a delicious portent of better work to come.
2. Finger Man - 3 Stars
This scene in the casino and some of the parking lot reminds me almost exactly of the film version of The Big Sleep with John Ridley (Eddie Mars) and Lauren Bacall.
Note: ALSO - Much of the initial cottage-photography nude-girl session in Killer in the Rain seems have been lifted from there directly into the superb The Big Sleep film version of 1946, screenplay by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett
Two croupiers stood near me with their heads together and their eyes looking side-wise. One moved a rake slowly back and forth beside the idle wheel. They were staring at the red-haired girl.
She wore a high-cut black evening gown. She had fine white shoulders, was something less than beautiful and more than pretty. She was leaning on the edge of the table, in front of the wheel. Her long eyelashes were twitching. There was a big pile of money and chips in front of her.
The croupier leaned across the table and very carefully stacked her money and chips. He placed her bet for her on the red diamond. He placed his hand along the curve of the wheel.
“If no one objects,” Canales said, without looking at anyone, “this is just the two of us.”
Marlowe's gun, a long .38 with a six-inch barrel.
Full size image here
Unfortunately, the story bogs down in too many twists and false explanations.
3. Goldfish - 3.5 Stars
Better than the second, but barely. Uneven pacing, a confused plot, repetitive dialogue that doesn’t always ring true, but a neat ending.
4. Red Wind - 4.5 Stars
Once this story gets going, you know it's the real thing. Early Chandler, but pure and clean. Great complex plot, good pacing, and the prose mostly smooth and effortless. Wonderful.
Two beautiful quotes, indisputably Chandler:
The old Levantine had a shop on Melrose, a junk shop with everything in the window from a folding baby carriage to a French horn, from a mother-of-pearl lorgnette in a faded plush case to one of those .44 Special Single Action six-shooters they still make for Western peace officers whose grandfathers were tough.
and
I went out of the bar without looking back at her, got into my car and drove west on Sunset and down all the way to the Coast Highway. Everywhere along the way gardens were full of withered and blackened leaves and flowers which the hot wind had burned.
But the ocean looked cool and languid and just the same as ever. I drove on almost to Malibu and then parked and went and sat on a big rock that was inside somebody’s wire fence. It was about half-tide and coming in. The air smelled of kelp.
.
March 21, 2017
Quintessential noir by one of the creators of the genre. Private eye Phillip Marlowe is the archetype of those that followed. This book is four (rather long) short stories. All excellent.
July 1, 2020
Although the four stories in this volume all feature Philip Marlowe, he is not quite yet the Marlowe of the novels -- but he is almost there. Raymond Chandler's Trouble is my Business is set in Los Angeles, with the detective living in Hollywood near Franklin Avenue. Thye best story by far is "Red Wind," which perfectly conveys the madness of our dry Santa Ana winds, when the wind blows in from the desert and pushes the smog off to sea, from where it soon comes tumbling back when the wind direction shifts. In this story, Chandler begins to approach the stylistic heights of his novels:
I went out of the bar without looking back at her, got into my car and drove west on Sunset and down all the way to the Coast Highway. Everywhere along the way gardens were full of withered and blackened leaves and flowers which the hot wind had burned.If you love Chandler as I do, you will want to read these stories. As for the stories before Marlowe came into being, they are only moderately interesting.
But the ocean looked cool and languid and just the same as ever. I drove on almost to Malibu and then parked and went and sat on a big rock that was inside somebody's wire fence. It was about half-tide and coming in. The air smelled of kelp. I watched the water for a while and then I pulled a string of Bohemian glass imitation pearls out of my pocket and cut the knot at one end and slipped the pearls off one by one.
September 12, 2021
My first exposure to the works of Raymond Chandler in the form of his famous detective character, Philip Marlowe. This brief anthology explores the detective's career in four adventures first published in the old pulps in the 1930s. I'm not a huge fan of the genre but given Chandler's standing and his influence particularly in Hollywood in the 1940s and beyond I knew I needed to give it a go. The first story was the most long-winded and worst for me, full of jargon that couldn't help but put me off; style over substance in my eyes. The second story adopted a political tone and was better, although still flawed. The third story started to entertain me with the amount of twists and turns and engaging characterisations found therein, while the fourth story was the best of all, sheer enjoyment from beginning to end. Assuming the stories here were in chronological order, perhaps this marks a natural progress in Chandler's career as a writer.
June 18, 2024
Five short stories.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Trouble is my Business. A wealthy man hires Dalmas a PI to find out about a woman who is getting her hooks into his stepson. The bodies start to pile up and Dalmas finds that Jeeter has his chauffeur George, kill his stepson to get his inheritance.
Red Wind. The best of the stories. A man is gunned down in front of John Dalmas in a bar. Then he is saved from the gunman by a woman the murdered man was blackmailing. In the end the woman was fooled by a conman who she loved that the pearls she was given were valuable. Dalmas destroys the pearls to let her keep her memories of true love. All this happens during a Red wind which makes people do strange things.
I’ll be waiting. A hotel detective protects a woman a gang is after to put pressure on her boyfriend who owes them money. He turns up and later gets in a gunfight with the gang and is killed unbeknownst to the girl.
Goldfish: Dalmas is after a reward for some stolen pearls stolen many years ago. The crook who took them was caught but never told where they were. He is now released and others are after the pearls. Again the bodies pile up and after the crook is killed he says something cryptic about fish and Dalmas finds the pearls in some goldfish.
Guns at Cyrano’s. Ted Malvern is wealthy from his crooked father. He helps a we man who like him is crooked and it ends after the bodies again pile up with them together. She was pretending to be a crooked Senator’s daughter and blackmailing him.
All the stories are set in 1930s LA. The atmosphere and humor are good. I believe later the detective was changed to Philip Marlowe.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Trouble is my Business. A wealthy man hires Dalmas a PI to find out about a woman who is getting her hooks into his stepson. The bodies start to pile up and Dalmas finds that Jeeter has his chauffeur George, kill his stepson to get his inheritance.
Red Wind. The best of the stories. A man is gunned down in front of John Dalmas in a bar. Then he is saved from the gunman by a woman the murdered man was blackmailing. In the end the woman was fooled by a conman who she loved that the pearls she was given were valuable. Dalmas destroys the pearls to let her keep her memories of true love. All this happens during a Red wind which makes people do strange things.
I’ll be waiting. A hotel detective protects a woman a gang is after to put pressure on her boyfriend who owes them money. He turns up and later gets in a gunfight with the gang and is killed unbeknownst to the girl.
Goldfish: Dalmas is after a reward for some stolen pearls stolen many years ago. The crook who took them was caught but never told where they were. He is now released and others are after the pearls. Again the bodies pile up and after the crook is killed he says something cryptic about fish and Dalmas finds the pearls in some goldfish.
Guns at Cyrano’s. Ted Malvern is wealthy from his crooked father. He helps a we man who like him is crooked and it ends after the bodies again pile up with them together. She was pretending to be a crooked Senator’s daughter and blackmailing him.
All the stories are set in 1930s LA. The atmosphere and humor are good. I believe later the detective was changed to Philip Marlowe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2013
I read Raymond Chandler for the language. The way he uses words is akin to magic. The opening to his short story "Red Wind," which is found in this collection of four, is iconic in detective fiction:
If you don't get goosebumps reading that passage, I have to doubt whether you're human.
He, along with Dashiell Hammett, were responsible for a whole sub genre. If some of what they wrote now sounds cliche, you have to remember it's because they invented it and dozens of writers followed in their path.
But the stories are starting to show their age. Chandler was born in 1888 and published his first story in 1933. Some of his marvelous language is slang that is no longer in use, making the references obscure and stopping the flow of the stories. Reading these stories reminded me of reading Shakespeare in school, with a wonderful English teacher who could put the language and references in context with the history and culture of the Elizabethan Age. Except I had no teacher explaining the references in Chandler's stories.
The other thing I noticed was the amount of drinking and smoking in the stories. Philip Marlowe, his detective, drinks any time of day or night and seems none the worse for wear despite this habit. We live in different times and smoking and excessive drinking have fallen out of fashion.
So I give this book four stars instead of five. But I'm still in awe of the writing.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.
If you don't get goosebumps reading that passage, I have to doubt whether you're human.
He, along with Dashiell Hammett, were responsible for a whole sub genre. If some of what they wrote now sounds cliche, you have to remember it's because they invented it and dozens of writers followed in their path.
But the stories are starting to show their age. Chandler was born in 1888 and published his first story in 1933. Some of his marvelous language is slang that is no longer in use, making the references obscure and stopping the flow of the stories. Reading these stories reminded me of reading Shakespeare in school, with a wonderful English teacher who could put the language and references in context with the history and culture of the Elizabethan Age. Except I had no teacher explaining the references in Chandler's stories.
The other thing I noticed was the amount of drinking and smoking in the stories. Philip Marlowe, his detective, drinks any time of day or night and seems none the worse for wear despite this habit. We live in different times and smoking and excessive drinking have fallen out of fashion.
So I give this book four stars instead of five. But I'm still in awe of the writing.
August 11, 2019
Title story is definitely the best. The copy I read was in Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories / The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The High Window and used the original pulp character names. Later updated/collected as Phillip Marlowe stories.
May 7, 2021
There are just four stories, all in the 50-60 page range, all vintage Chandler. The cadence of the writing is perfect. In the wikipedia article on hardboiled crime fiction, Chandler's Philip Marlowe is the first of the half dozen named private detectives. Notable hardboiled detectives include Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op. I wonder that I haven't read any of the others, although I do have a Lew Archer waiting my attention.
My favorite of the four was "Goldfish". It opens with a wonderful line: I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling. The backstory was that 20 years ago, a man had robbed the mail pouch on a train. The man was tracked down, arrested, and served his time. All of the loot was recovered except for two extremely large pearls. The insurance company and many operatives had been after them for years. Enter Philip Marlowe.
Pearls were also part of the story of the last in the collection, "Red Wind". While I enjoyed the time I spent reading this, I was lost most of the time. Perhaps Chandler wrote this as the basis for the script of a hoped-for film, or maybe he fiddled with it thinking he'd eventually enlarge it into a novel. There were just more characters than the length could support. Even so, the ending was pretty darned perfect.
Recently I said I thought Nero Wolfe might be better as short stories. As much as I was glad to be back with Philip Marlowe, I think I like him better in a novel. I think "Goldfish" made this collection, but I cannot find more than 3-stars overall.
My favorite of the four was "Goldfish". It opens with a wonderful line: I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling. The backstory was that 20 years ago, a man had robbed the mail pouch on a train. The man was tracked down, arrested, and served his time. All of the loot was recovered except for two extremely large pearls. The insurance company and many operatives had been after them for years. Enter Philip Marlowe.
Pearls were also part of the story of the last in the collection, "Red Wind". While I enjoyed the time I spent reading this, I was lost most of the time. Perhaps Chandler wrote this as the basis for the script of a hoped-for film, or maybe he fiddled with it thinking he'd eventually enlarge it into a novel. There were just more characters than the length could support. Even so, the ending was pretty darned perfect.
Recently I said I thought Nero Wolfe might be better as short stories. As much as I was glad to be back with Philip Marlowe, I think I like him better in a novel. I think "Goldfish" made this collection, but I cannot find more than 3-stars overall.
October 3, 2022
Read a slightly different edition from 1962 with the following stories:
Trouble is My Business
Red Wind
I’ll Be Waiting
Goldfish
Guns at Cyrano’s
In this edition the various private detectives haven’t been edited together into Philip Marlowe, so instead you get “Carmady” or “John Dalmas”, but they’re all the same guy.
Mixed bag. Best is Red Wind, a one-crazy-night story where everyone’s a little nuts and the unfortunate coincidences keep piling up – kind of an After Hours vibe.
The title story is pretty classic Chandler, detective as class-chameleon, dark secrets of the rich and beautiful, yadda yadda. I’ll Be Waiting is a little vignette, a bit like a hardboiled version of a Stefan Zweig melodramatic short. Goldfish takes the detective out of LA; it meanders but has fantastic dialogue, meaning I understood very little and enjoyed it a lot.
Guns at Cyrano’s is the one dud. Third-person doesn’t sit right with an (ersatz-)Marlowe story; somehow it always results in there being one too many people to keep track of in a scene. Someone other than our hero explains the plot at the end, which makes the dick look like a putz.
Still, you can’t beat (or imitate) Chandler, best to ever do it etc. Red Wind is probably online somewhere, seek it out for a good time.
Trouble is My Business
Red Wind
I’ll Be Waiting
Goldfish
Guns at Cyrano’s
In this edition the various private detectives haven’t been edited together into Philip Marlowe, so instead you get “Carmady” or “John Dalmas”, but they’re all the same guy.
Mixed bag. Best is Red Wind, a one-crazy-night story where everyone’s a little nuts and the unfortunate coincidences keep piling up – kind of an After Hours vibe.
The title story is pretty classic Chandler, detective as class-chameleon, dark secrets of the rich and beautiful, yadda yadda. I’ll Be Waiting is a little vignette, a bit like a hardboiled version of a Stefan Zweig melodramatic short. Goldfish takes the detective out of LA; it meanders but has fantastic dialogue, meaning I understood very little and enjoyed it a lot.
Guns at Cyrano’s is the one dud. Third-person doesn’t sit right with an (ersatz-)Marlowe story; somehow it always results in there being one too many people to keep track of in a scene. Someone other than our hero explains the plot at the end, which makes the dick look like a putz.
Still, you can’t beat (or imitate) Chandler, best to ever do it etc. Red Wind is probably online somewhere, seek it out for a good time.
January 26, 2024
This was a collection of short stories and it didn't quite hit the mark with me like most of the full length stories have. They were still pretty good though. There are four stories, Trouble is my business, Finger man, Goldfish, and Red wind. I think I enjoyed Goldfish the most. I ended up giving all 4 stories 3 stars.
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Review also posted at Writings of a Reader and on Facebook.
I now have a Booktube channel, follow me at Recordings of a Reader.
Review also posted at Writings of a Reader and on Facebook.
January 6, 2021
Stories of hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe.
Mystery Review: Trouble is My Business contains four gritty detective stories: "Finger Man" (1934), "Goldfish" (1936), "Red Wind" (1938), and "Trouble is my Business" (1939). All are ostensibly stories featuring Chandler's legendary hero, Philip Marlowe. But a couple of these stories had earlier lives in which the hero wasn't Marlowe. In an earlier incarnation of "Red Wind" the tough guy detective was John Dalmas. The story "Goldfish" originally presented Ted Carmady as our hero and his pal on the police force is Bernie Obis (later to become better known to Marlowe aficionados as Bernie Ohls). The lead character in three of the stories isn't much like the Philip Marlowe we know. He doesn't play chess, quote literature, or seem committed to the life of a knight errant. He's ethically challenged, needs to make a buck, and is working overtime to sound bona fide. There's little of the sharp banter and telling similes. It's really only in the last story, "Red Wind," that we start to see Marlowe as he became. The stories in Trouble is My Business also don't show the detective evolving into the character he became. Chandler wasn't that bothered with the myth of Marlowe to create an origin story for him, as would be done now. Mostly these stories strive to sound authentic, trying to establish "street cred" to appeal to the readers of Thirties pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective Magazine where these stories first appeared. In Trouble is My Business we don't get the focus on character over plot that was emblematic of the Marlowe novels. "Goldfish" and "Red Wind" are the two best stories, but all four could've been stretched into novels if Chandler put in the effort. At around 50 pages each, they read more like short novels than long stories. Seems like a "Collected Stories of Philip Marlowe" is due, as has been done for other detectives such as Hercule Poirot or Peter Wimsey. [4★]
Mystery Review: Trouble is My Business contains four gritty detective stories: "Finger Man" (1934), "Goldfish" (1936), "Red Wind" (1938), and "Trouble is my Business" (1939). All are ostensibly stories featuring Chandler's legendary hero, Philip Marlowe. But a couple of these stories had earlier lives in which the hero wasn't Marlowe. In an earlier incarnation of "Red Wind" the tough guy detective was John Dalmas. The story "Goldfish" originally presented Ted Carmady as our hero and his pal on the police force is Bernie Obis (later to become better known to Marlowe aficionados as Bernie Ohls). The lead character in three of the stories isn't much like the Philip Marlowe we know. He doesn't play chess, quote literature, or seem committed to the life of a knight errant. He's ethically challenged, needs to make a buck, and is working overtime to sound bona fide. There's little of the sharp banter and telling similes. It's really only in the last story, "Red Wind," that we start to see Marlowe as he became. The stories in Trouble is My Business also don't show the detective evolving into the character he became. Chandler wasn't that bothered with the myth of Marlowe to create an origin story for him, as would be done now. Mostly these stories strive to sound authentic, trying to establish "street cred" to appeal to the readers of Thirties pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective Magazine where these stories first appeared. In Trouble is My Business we don't get the focus on character over plot that was emblematic of the Marlowe novels. "Goldfish" and "Red Wind" are the two best stories, but all four could've been stretched into novels if Chandler put in the effort. At around 50 pages each, they read more like short novels than long stories. Seems like a "Collected Stories of Philip Marlowe" is due, as has been done for other detectives such as Hercule Poirot or Peter Wimsey. [4★]
April 10, 2018
This is a great little collection of four quick and punchy Marlowe stories. It's the second time I've read Trouble is My Business but a few years down the line I found that I hadn't really remembered anything so it still felt pretty fresh to me. None of the novellas here really rise to the heights of Chandler's best work, but then none are as confusingly plotted, either. There are enough dry one-liners to keep fans of Chandler's style entertained and I feel that, somehow, these four stories presented together offer a greater level of insight into the character of Marlowe himself, perhaps because he seems more assured here than in the grander plots of longer novels. When Marlowe (and the reader) isn't lost in some intricate plot triggered by wealthy Los Angelinos but rather down among Marlowe's own world of middlemen, hustlers, and cops, he can exert a greater degree of control and display a more proactive side to his personality. Marlowe becomes less of a cypher for the world around him and more of a protagonist in his own right. Trouble is My Business, therefor, makes a pretty good starting point for readers new to Chandler. These stories put the Marlowe of The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye into more extensive context and they are fun to boot! Any of the four stories here would make for a pretty great film. Don't know who I'd cast as Marlowe though...
February 21, 2024
Trouble Is My Business is a fun read and is classic Chandler. The way each story flows is unique to itself and describes the world of 1930s/40s LA in vivid detail. Do I like it as much as his full length novels? No. Does it scratch an itch that only Chandler can satisfy? Unequivocally yes! I find his style more storytelling than mystery solving but I never mind that because I am so drawn into the action. Chandler usually has me thinking about why someone did something not necessarily who did what. His wit, his descriptions, and his grittiness never disappoint. He has created a character in Philip Marlowe that is second to none in my book. This moral character in an immoral world. Navigating the good the bad and the ugly of the world. All while taking a beating.
I would recommend if you like:
Noir
Crime
Feeling immersed in a story, especially of the early days of Los Angeles
A main character you can get behind
Witty dialogue
To have the setting also be a main character in the story telling
Shorter stories that tell a complete story
I would caution you if:
You want a pure mystery
You find colloquial phrases hard to follow (they can be difficult at times)
You don’t like crime or the gritty part of life
Want a full length novel
I would recommend if you like:
Noir
Crime
Feeling immersed in a story, especially of the early days of Los Angeles
A main character you can get behind
Witty dialogue
To have the setting also be a main character in the story telling
Shorter stories that tell a complete story
I would caution you if:
You want a pure mystery
You find colloquial phrases hard to follow (they can be difficult at times)
You don’t like crime or the gritty part of life
Want a full length novel
June 24, 2017
This book is made up of four of Chandler's novellas or novelettes. They have most of the things I love about Raymond Chandler's novels: hardboiled prose to weep for, enough characters and twists to make your head spin, and nearly indecipherable plots.
The fact that I read all the stories and enjoyed them, despite their flaws or even because of them, is a testament to Chandler's legacy as one of the greatest hardboiled crime writers ever.
The fact that I read all the stories and enjoyed them, despite their flaws or even because of them, is a testament to Chandler's legacy as one of the greatest hardboiled crime writers ever.
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