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Like Holmes, the American private eye rejects the social conventions of his time.

But unlike Holmes, he feels his society to be not merely dull but also corrupt.

Surrounded by crime and violence everywhere, the `` hardboiled '' private eye can retain his purity only through a life of self-imposed isolation.

His alienation is far more acute than Holmes' ; ;

he is not an eccentric but rather an outcast.

With Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, alienation is represented on a purely physical plane.

Wolfe refuses to ever leave his own house, and spends most of his time drinking beer and playing with orchids.

More profound and more disturbing, however, is the moral isolation of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

In a society where everything is for sale, Marlowe is the only man who cannot be bought.

His tough honesty condemns him to a solitary and difficult existence.

Beaten, bruised and exhausted, he pursues the elusive killer through the demi-monde of high society and low morals, always alone, always despised.

In the end, he gets his man, but no one seems to care ; ;

virtue is its own and only reward.

A similar tone of underlying futility and despair pervades the spy thrillers of Eric Ambler and dominates the most famous of all American mystery stories, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

Sam Spade joins forces with a band of adventurers in search of a priceless jeweled statue of a falcon ; ;

but when the bird is found at last, it turns out to be a fake.

Now the detective must save his own skin by informing on the girl he loves, who is also the real murderer.

For Sam Spade, neither crime nor virtue pays ; ;

moreover, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two.