Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 276 – Philip Marlowe – Trouble Is My Business

Radio Detective Story Hour

Raymond Chandler’s early writing career was mainly as a poet and essayist for several publications while living in the United Kingdom. But Chandler was not happy with it and returned to the U.S. to become an accountant. After being wounded in the trenches of France, he returned to the U.S. hoping to take up writing. Instead he hired on with an oil company where he worked until 1932 after being fired for his drinking, womanizing and depression. He began to write again and published his first pulp detective story in Black Mask magazine in December 1933 in “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” featuring his first detective Mallory

By his third detective story, Chandler switched to the first person and changed the name of his detective to Carmady – not to be confused with another Chandler detective, Ted Carmady. Carmady was a rough early blueprint for Philip Marlowe. But he had a short life when a new character appeared in the form of John Dalmas. He was a slightly rougher Philip Marlowe though many of Marlowe’s characteristics can be seen in the author’s Dalmas detective run and some critics feel his is a fully-fleshed Marlowe.

Dalmas first appeared in the pulp magazine Dime Detective after they wooed Chandler from Black Mask with a better paying gig. You can hear a Marlowe version of John Dalmas in the first radio iteration of Philip Marlowe in the story: “Trouble Is My Business.” The Dime Detective story features the detective as Dalmas, while the radio version features him as Marlowe. “Trouble Is My Business” was the last of the Dime Detective short stories and like the others more full featured and plotted than the radio adaptation by Milton Geiger.

Music under is Dee Dee Bridgewater singing “Angel Eyes.”