The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the… - Raymond Chandler

Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts....nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo.

There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.