Terror Is My Trade is a 1958 novel written by Stephen Marlowe.
It is part of Marlowe's long-running book series about globe-trotting private detective Chester Drum. These stories had a habit of placing Drum in exotic locations, and in this book, Drum has been hired as a bodyguard to former Congressman Wade Rumbough. Rumbough is working as the American representative in a series of talks with NATO powers, and is headed to Europe. Drum is surprised to also encounter, on the boat to Europe, a racketeer named Gino Garda who is on the boat because he's been deported from the United States. Drum further finds out that Garda the gangster has a connection to Rumbough's innocent daughter Helen.
Drum is approached by Paul Bible, a member of the American delegation that Rumbough is heading. Bible says that he has important information and demands that Drum meet him on the promenade deck late at night. Drum makes the meeting, and is just in time to see Bible murdered and tossed into the ocean. Drum determines to find out who killed him, and uncovers a tangled conspiracy including marital infidelity, blackmail, and an international heroin-smuggling ring.
Tropes:
- Alcohol Hic: A drunk Rufus threatens to kill Gino for sleeping with Helen, but it doesn't really work because he's a pathetic weakling. His threat is even more undercut when he hiccups.
- Blood from the Mouth:
- Rufus Rombough coughs blood from the mouth after Eve and Chet find him, in a bathtub, dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- "A gout of blood pumped out of his mouth" as Gino gasps out his last words, after being cut down in a hail of bullets from a machine gun.
- Bluffing the Murderer: How Chet gets Helen to confess to the murder of Paul Bible, by pretending that Gino told him all about it.
- Bound and Gagged: A little bit of titillation has Chet and Eve subdue Albert Alloy's redheaded moll, then strip the moll of her blouse and stockings, which they use to bind and gag her.
- Buxom Beauty Standard:
- When Eve takes off her clothes for sex, Chet admires her "big, high breasts" and "flaring hips."
- Later he admires the "full breasts" of Gino's cousin Maria.
- Fat Bastard: "La Thevenin", a French woman who runs a sex club and is part of the heroin cartel that Gino is trying to take over. She is six feet tall and described as almost as wide, weighing in at over 300 pounds.
- A Foggy Day in London Town: Chet gets out of a car in London and complains of the fog, "some fog" which he can feel stinging his eyes and taste in the back of his throat. This also serves as Ominous Fog as he is headed to a confrontation with gangsters that turns violent.
- Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: Chet and Eve narrowly avoid death when they suffer a blown tire while driving a twisty mountain road at high speed. Then, they narrowly avoid death again when a truck zooms around the curve and knocks their car down 500 feet into the valley below. They react to this by dashing up the nearby hillside for sex.
- The Infiltration: Chet is approached by representatives of various European police agencies, and is recruited to pretend to go to work for Gino Garda, in hopes of taking down the drug-smuggling syndicate that Garda himself is trying to take over.
- The Mafia: Gino Garda is a racketeer who at the beginning of the novel has been deported from the United States. He has plans of starting a new criminal empire in Europe.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Wade's wife Charlotte aka "Chickie" slept with so many men back in the day that no one can be sure who's the biological father of their daughter Helen. It might be Wade, it might be Wade's brother Rufus, or it might be Gino Garda the gangster.
- Medium Awareness: The first words of the book are "This one starts with a girl and a medicine ball," as Chet watches Eve work out in the ocean liner's gym.
- Mutual Kill: Feather, one of Albert's goons, shoots La Thevenin four times. But she, being a 300-lb giant, is still able to crawl over to him and strangle him to death before she dies as well.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: Chet has just given a beating to Caretti, a mook and minion of Gino who first tried to blackmail Helen, then assaulted her, before Chet jumped in and stomped him.Without looking up he said a four-letter word and the second person pronoun.
- Sexy Sweater Girl: "Her breasts rose tautly under her polo shirt" as Dr. Eve McGivern throws a medicine ball around, much to Chet's appreciation.
- Surprise Incest: Helen Rombough and Gino Garda are lovers, despite the fact that Gino may be her biological father. (Eve thinks he is.)
- Vorpal Pillow: In the backstory. A dying Rufus confesses that way back in 1940, he murdered Wade's faithless wife Chickie this way, after she taunted him about how she was going to go back to her husband.
