42 pages • 1 hour read
Raymond ChandlerTrouble Is My Business
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1934A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Liquor
The boozy detective is a cliché of hard-boiled mysteries, but Raymond Chandler uses liquor to further the plot of the stories in this collection and to symbolize various qualities of his characters. “Trouble Is My Business” repeatedly makes mention of the expensive Scotch that Harriet keeps in her apartment. This specific choice of beverage implies that she is a woman of taste who can afford good liquor, and that she is as hard-boiled as the men. By the end of the story, Marlowe has developed a taste for Harriet’s liquor as well as for her company. He realizes that in order to play the game, he must participate—he cannot be wholly morally superior those he investigates.
In “Goldfish,” Madder shares a glass of whiskey with Marlowe as a sign of their agreement to cooperate in finding the pearls but demonstrates his duplicity when he spikes Marlowe’s drink to knock him out. Marlowe’s partnership with Sunset has a better outcome. After the two men warily agree to become allies in finding the Leander pearls, they share glasses of Scotch in Marlowe’s hotel room. Alcohol in this way forms bridges and relationships that allow Marlowe to participate in his investigations.
In “Red Wind,” Marlowe notices the drunk at the bar downing straight shots of cheap rye. In contrast, Waldo orders a single shot of good quality Scotch before being gunned down by the rye drinker. Later, Marlowe attempts to calm Lola by offering a glass of his own extra-fine Scotch. At the end of the tale, he downs some Scotch before calling Lola to tell her that he’s recovered her pearls. As with Harriet, Marlowe associates fine Scotch with Lola. When he meets her the following day to return her necklace, he finds her drinking a shot of peppermint. As he leaves, he offers her his highball instead, advising her that drinking peppermint will make her sick. The offer of his drink symbolizes Marlowe’s protective attitude toward Lola throughout the story. Scotch is a straightforward drink that cannot disguise what it is, and in this way may be more appropriate for Lola than Schnapps.
Femmes Fatales
As might be expected in the noir crime genre, dangerous women always factor into the plots of these stories. Just as the author uses liquor to reveal character, the guns used by femmes fatales function the same way. A character’s choice of weapon speaks volumes about her trustworthiness and competence.
In “Trouble Is My Business,” Gerald is killed with a woman’s purse gun, which has been left at the scene of the crime by George to implicate Harriet. When Marlowe retrieves the weapon and presents it to Harriet later in the story, she protests that she doesn’t know much about guns but only keeps it around for protection. Marlowe makes several wry comments about Harriet’s effective use of the weapon. He says, “I saw her thumb slide very gently towards the safety catch. She didn’t know much about guns, but she knew that much” (54). When Harriet later shoots George in the wrist with deadly accuracy before he can attack Marlowe, the detective adds, “The small automatic in the girl’s hand cracked. Blood spurted from George’s brown hard hand. The Smith & Wesson dropped to the floor. He cursed. She didn’t know much about guns—not very much” (55). Marlowe admires Harriet’s proficiency with a gun. While he initially perceives her as dangerous, she becomes a capable ally by the end of the story.
In contrast, Marlowe forms a similarly favorable reaction to Lola in “Red Wind” for the opposite reason. She’s utterly incompetent in the use of firearms. When Lola holds him at gunpoint in his apartment because she fears he wants to blackmail her, Marlowe tells her, “Lady, will you please either put that gun away or take the safety catch off? It hurts my professional feelings to see a nice gun made a monkey of that way” (175). Lola’s inability to fire a gun is a sign of her innocence. Even though she fears to shoot, Lola does manage to use her gun to good effect by sticking it into Al’s back before he can kill Marlowe, thus saving the detective’s life.
Both women are introduced in their respective stories as potential femme fatales but prove to be sympathetic figures. In contrast, Carol Donovan is a femme fatale in the truest sense of the term. She knows how to handle a gun with lethal accuracy and doesn’t hesitate to kill anyone who gets in her way.
Obstructive Duos
The four stories in this collection consistently feature duos who act as impediments in Marlowe’s search for the truth. These pairs of individuals usually seem mismatched in some way. Some are merely thugs intended to move the action forward, as is the case in “Finger Man” with Dorr’s two hitmen. Others are more fully rounded personalities. In “Trouble Is My Business,” Jeeter hires two toughs to intimidate Marlowe. Waxnose is the brains of the duo, and he takes a protective interest in his high-strung partner, Frisky. He tells Marlowe, “‘It’s Frisky I’m thinking about. Crazy, ain’t it? Me bothering about a dimwit like that, packin’ him around with me, and letting him get hisself bumped off.’ He sighed and added simply, ‘He was my kid brother’” (44). In the same story, Marlowe is confronted by two detectives named Finlayson and Seybold, who function as good cop and bad cop. Finlayson is willing to see reason while Seybold wants to build a case implicating Marlowe in Frisky’s murder.
Marlowe is confronted by a different kind of obstacle in “Goldfish,” represented by the duo of Rush Madder and Carol Donovan. They are as mismatched as the other teams Marlowe encounters elsewhere. Madder is a coward and a fool. He takes his orders from Carol, who is half his size but exhibits the ruthlessness of a sadistic sociopath.
The most fully developed pair of personalities who obstruct Marlowe in solving his cases are to be found in “Red Wind.” Detective Copernik is a dirty cop. He’s a racist who resents his Latino partner, Ybarra, and is greedy for personal glory. Copernik won’t even hesitate to murder Marlowe if this crime will preserve his cover-up about apprehending Al Tessilore single-handedly. Much like reasonable Detective Finlayson in “Trouble Is My Business,” Ybarra functions as the level-headed partner in the detective duo of “Red Wind.” He shrugs off Copernik’s ethnic slurs and calmly points out that cooperating with Marlowe will be more likely to give Copernik the outcome he wants.
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By Raymond Chandler
