Granted the below comment, I’m not sure I agree with this concluding paragraph from Alan’s latest blog post:

So if the detective story depended on the readers’ confidence in the integrity of the System, what happens when that confidence evaporates? Obviously a return to crime fiction: from the uprightness of Poirot and Lord Peter and even Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, we move to the morally sloppy, thoroughly compromised, just barely more-slimed-than-sliming porotagonists of Elmore Leonard’s novels; or Danny Ocean and his crew. Perhaps that’s why the most popular detective stories are those of the Golden Age, which provide an opportunity for us to enter a more innocent time than ours, more innocent in multiple respects, one in which we’re not openly rooting for thieves and murderers.

My entirely unscientific, impressionistic reaction is that Americans were, a century ago, just as happy to cheer on outlaws as they are today, and vice versa, Americans today are no less eager to read, watch, and cheer on System-assuming, System-upholding, System-repping detectives and deputies and delegates as they solve crimes and put away bad guys than they were during the Golden Age of detective fiction.