The Cold War Swap

Minotaur is proud to publish The Cold War Swap with The Fools in Town are on Our Side in the second installment of Minotaur's planned rerelease of Ross Thomas's works, following on the heels of Out on the Rim and Briarpatch. The Cold War Swap received both an Edgar Award and the Mystery Writers of America Award for Best First Mystery Novel of the Year. With these rereleases, Minotaur is honored to bring readers the thrillers they deserve, thereby delighting Thomas's fans and introducing him to those readers who may not know what they are missing. In The Cold War Swap, Saloon owner 'Mac' McCorkle runs a popular bar in Bonn, Germany. He becomes the cloak and good friend of a very suave, multilingual, and lethal dagger named Mike Padillo. Late of the OSS, Padillo is the man they send out on the little 'jobs' that never make the papers. His assignment in the 'Swap' is to bring back defectors from the NSA (No Such Agency, at the time) through Checkpoint Charlie. Unfortun-ately, anything that could go wrong does, and McCorkle is soon on his way to help Padillo through the assorted mayhem, kid-nap-ping, murder, and the odd double- and triple-crosses.

Ross Thomas is ranked as one of the very top thriller writers by his fellow authors, and his readers loudly agree. Two Edgar Awards, and other prizes, only complement the abundant praise that Thomas has received.

Thomas died in 1995, and since then all but one of his twenty-five novels have gone out of print. This should never have happened to the man of whom The New Yorker has said "Very few...are as consistently entertaining...even fewer can match him for style and power." Minotaur is proud to remedy this situation by reissuing Thomas's novels. So start reading, and prepare to join Ross Thomas's legions of admiring fans.

"America's Best Storyteller."-New York Times Book Review