Arvind Ethan David is a Stoker Award-nominated graphic novelist who has also written chart-topping Audiodramas, television, and plays. Arvind is also a producer of film and theater, including the Emmy & Grammy award-winning musical Jagged Little Pill. Arvind's career started when he adapted the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as his college play and Adams came to see it. Years later, Arvind brought Dirk Gently to a global audience as a Netflix/AMC TV series. His latest graphic novel is Raymond Chandler's Trouble is My Business and he recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.

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What inspired you to adapt Raymond Chandler's Trouble is My Business into a graphic novel?

I was introduced to the Chandler Estate by a publisher friend. I've always been a fan but had never considered them professionally. But when it was suggested that I might think about a graphic novel adaptation, it was an almost immediate yes. Chandler's descriptions are amongst the greatest in 20th century prose, and he perfected a style and mode—detective noir—that is hugely influential in contemporary comics (everything from Sin City to 1000 Bullets to Fatale and Powers and Jessica Jones owes a debt to Chandler so the idea of being able to bring the your text into the medium it had so influenced was too tempting...

How did you come to work with Ilias Kyriazis (pencils & inks) and Cris Peter (colors) on this project? Had you worked together before? Did you seek them out? Some other way?

Ilias and I have made 4 books together (3 volumes of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and now this rather different detective story)—we have a short hand and a shared sensibility and simply put, he makes my writing better with his pictures. So that was the only call I made, and he and Cris had collaborated in the past, and he recommended her, and the second I saw her work, I was down.

What was your process for working with them on this project?

We work on Slack and via the scripts, and entirely virtually. I've never met Cris in person (she lives in Brazil), and Ilias and I only met once at a convention in New York 7 years ago. It's a madly efficient collaboration.

Is Trouble is My Business your favorite of Raymond Chandler’s works? If not, what is?

Trouble is a relatively minor work in the Chandler oeuvre. First written in 1939 as a short story that didn't even feature Marlowe, but then reworked in 1950 to novella length and brought it into the Marlowe canon. I love it, but it's not one of the masterworks. My personal favorite is either The Big Sleep or The Lady in the Lake, but it's honestly hard to choose between the masterworks; they are all magnificent.

Do you remember when you were first exposed to "detective fiction" and/or film noir? What was it you saw/read? How old were you?

Detective Fiction—Sherlock Holmes when I was about 8 or 9. It was love at first story. Noir, probably a little later, and through the movies. First Sunset Boulevard maybe in my teens, and then The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity in my early twenties.

Were you intimidated by the idea of adding your own material to such a well-known story and character?

Yes.

We lost Raymond Chandler in 1959. If you could ask him something, what would it be?

Who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep? Why did you move house 32 times in 30 years? Why doesn't Marlowe get to have sex?

Is there something you wish you could tell him?

Drink less. It doesn't end well.

Do you have a theory regarding why noir in general, and Chandler's works specifically, continue to be popular with readers, writers, and filmmakers?

It's a form that allows an exploration of the darkest parts of our souls and societies, but within a format that feels relatively safe and normally ends more or less well. We need to look at the abyss, but the rules of noir stop us falling into it.

What's currently on your nightstand?

Zadie Smith's The Fraud, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Ben Winter's The Last Policeman.

Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?

Douglas Adams
P.G. Wodehouse
Arthur Conan Doyle
Salman Rushdie
Isaac Asimov
Oscar Wilde
Tom Stoppard
(That's 7, but two are playwrights)

What was your favorite book when you were a child?

Leave it to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse.

Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?

My parents live for books. My mother is an academic and a librarian. Hiding a book in my house would have made no sense. I remember my mother warning me to be careful because the James Bond books had a lot of sex in them, and I remember thinking, "Why is that a bad thing?"

Is there a book you've faked reading?

I used to pretend I liked Dickens. I don't. Sorry.

Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?

A really nice box set of Dickens. It didn't help.

Is there a book that changed your life?

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. I adapted it at age 16, and he came to see it, and my life began.

Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Big Sleep
Leave it to Psmith
Lord of the Rings

Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?

To read Wodehouse for the first time would be magical.

What is the last piece of art (music, movies, TV, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?

Season 2 of Andor is about as perfect a piece of mainstream television as I could imagine. A treatise on what it is to resist creeping authoritarianism, a character study, and a radical reinvention of a universe that was getting stale.

What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?

Breakfast with Tom Stoppard.
Lunch with Oscar Wilde.
A ramble on the heath with Sherlock Holmes.
Drinks with Dorothy Parker and Raymond Chandler.
And an evening at the Kit Kat Club.

What is the question that you're always hoping you'll be asked, but never have been?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What is your answer?

This.

What are you working on now?

A novel set in Edwardian England, a kind of anti-empire thriller, for Thomas Mercer; a stage adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which opens in London in November—that's the next two things.

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