Smoking on Mount Rushmore: 16 Selected & New Short Stories offers the reader different types of stories. A few stories are sweet and poignant in tone. Such a tale as "The Thief of Hearts" finds a serious young lady who is coming to grips with her strained relationship with a career ne'er-do-well. The son in "Lakota Road" takes his sick father for his last drive along the road to their old home. I like to use strong female protagonists in my fiction. "Mr. Weem's Dog" finds a young lady, Sharon Knowles, as a criminology student interning at at large city police department where she learns firsthand about at how cunning murderers can be. I also included several of my hardboiled P.I. Frank Johnson stories in "The Perfect Victim" and "Following the Sunsphere." Dark romance emerges in the powerful title story where a couple embark on a quixotic road trip to Mount Rushmore. The Loch Ness Monster plays a major role in the haunting short story "Camera Shy." Something is featured for all crime fiction fans.