Moreover, as Chandler pointed out, the American detective story shows "a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities . . . it is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in." In that world, the detective provides a contrast as "down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean . . . a man of honor — by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it."
In the real world, who would you have on your side as an ally in a tough spot. Miss Marple? Lord Peter Wimsey? Hercule Poirot? Or would you rather have Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Jake Gittes, or Jim Rockford? And, in a deeper sense, American hard boiled detectives show how we too should act when in life we are forced to go down mean streets.
The British detectives were the product of a polite and civilized society, possibly the best the world has ever seen. American “hardboiled” fiction is plain nihilistic, a product of a violent frontier society beset by all kinds of subcultures lusting for unearned wealth to be taken by violence.
America a la the Founding Fathers is great. But that is because it was essentialy BRITISH in origin and highly civilized. The later melting pot of all kinds of mongrelized peoples fighting one another for wealth and power is more like Machiavellian Florence than what George Washington envisioned.
Diversity is NOT your strength.