Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve a problem.
Raymond ChandlerYou don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jail house. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.
Raymond ChandlerTelevision is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.
Raymond ChandlerAnd the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.
Raymond Chandler