Smoking on Mount Rushmore — Ed Lynskey

This short fiction collection assembles 16 stories, most of them published from 2000-2010, by Ed Lynskey. The crime fiction first appeared in Shots, Thuglit, Mississippi Review Online, and Crime Scene Scotland. The editors selecting the stories include Sarah Weinman, Allan Guthrie, Anthony Neil Smith, Todd Robinson, and Russel D. McLean. The stories range from soft-boiled like “The Thief of Hearts” and “Mr. Weems' Dog” to the more noirish, hardboiled “Laetrile” and “How to Defuse a Terrorist.” The pair of long stories “Sins of the Father?” and “Juror Number Three” are the unpublished bonus titles. “Mr. Weems' Dog” features P.I. Sharon Knowles with her cast as a university student while she interns at the Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. Five stories feature the P.I. Frank Johnson series character. He and his sidekick bounty hunter Gerald Peyton appear in seven well-received books, including PELHAM FELL HERE and THE BLUE CHEER. The recurring character Payne, a perennial hard-luck dude, stars in the pair of noir stories, “Lakota Road” and “Emily, Thrice Stoned.”