The Eighth Dwarf

Nicolae Polscaru, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall dwarf, is tossed into a Hollywood swimming pool by four drunken screenwriters, who take bets on how long he can tread water. Minor Jackson, his OSS training still fresh a year after World War II's end, beats the bullies senseless and pulls Nicolae from the water. A friendship is born.
Jackson is broke, his spying days over, and Nicolae offers him a job. A former spy himself, the globetrotting Romanian has a commission to find Kurt Oppenheimer, an expert assassin of high-ranking Nazis. Kurt won't stop killing, no matter what the bloodshed will do to the fragile world peace, and the Soviets, the British, and the remains of the Nazi High Command all want his head. Jackson will beat them all to finding Kurt-unless his new friend betrays him first.

Review quote.

"Ross Thomas is without peer in American suspense." - The Los Angeles Times.
"What Elmore Leonard does for crime in the streets, Ross Thomas does for crime in the suites." - The Village Voice.
"Ross Thomas is that rare phenomenon, a writer of suspense whose novels can be read with pleasure more than once." - Eric Ambler, author of The Mask of Dimitrios.

Biographical note.

The winner of the inaugural Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award, Ross Thomas (1926-1995) was a prolific author whose political thrillers drew praise for their blend of wit and suspense. Born in Oklahoma City, Thomas grew up during the Great Depression, and served in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent, public relations official, and political strategist before publishing his first novel, "The Cold War Swap" (1967), based on his experience working in Bonn, Germany. The novel was a hit, winning Thomas as an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and establishing the characters Mac McCorkle and Mike Padillo.

Thomas followed it up with three more novels about McCorkle and Padillo, the last of which was published in 1990. He wrote nearly a book a year for twenty-five years, occasionally under the pen name Oliver Bleeck, and won the Edgar Award for Best Novel with "Briarpatch" (1984). Thomas died of lung cancer in California in 1995, a year after publishing his final novel, "Ah, Treachery!"