In 1976, the critic Paul Nelson spent several weeks interviewing his literary hero, legendary detective writer Ross Macdonald. Beginning in the late 1940s with his shadowy creation, ruminating private eye Lew Archer, Macdonald had followed in the footsteps of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but ultimately elevated the form to a new level. " We talked about everything imaginable ," Nelson wrote―including Macdonald's often meager beginnings; his dual citizenship; writers, painters, music, books, and mo
" It's All One Case is the most important work of mystery scholarship to have emerged this century." —John Connolly, author of The Charlie Parker Mysteries
"Ross Macdonald, in the view of many, was the greatest detective-novelist ever—an author who earned a place amongst the best fiction-writers of his time. "Paul Nelson was a highly regarded journalist and critic for Rolling Stone and other counter-culture publications of the 1960s and '70s. "In 1976, these two writers came together for a series of interviews in which Nelson induced the taciturn Macdonald, a man of formidable intelligence, to speak at length and in gratifying detail on all manner of topics: a