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.