Out of Hounds

Jane “Sister” Arnold, the Master of Foxhounds of the Jefferson Hunt, and her friends are now in their 60s and early 70s, but they remain as spry as ever, as shown in bestseller Brown’s stately 13th mystery set in Virginia hunt country (after 2019’s Scarlet Fever). The nefarious doings begin with the theft of a painting by Sir Alfred Munnings, a real-life English artist known for his horse paintings, from the home of a prominent member of the hunt. Other thefts are soon followed by murders, and Sister and her sweetheart, Gray Lorillard, become the target of a killer. Meanwhile, members of the noisy anti-hunting crowd are out in force making trouble. The mystery plot occasionally peeps through digressions on such topics as the ideal way to organize horse stalls and the evolution of riding habit styles through the centuries. The narrative is fattened by scenes in which talking dogs, horses, cats, foxes, and even birds put in their two cents’ worth on the actions of the humans. Animal lovers and those curious about the elite world of fox hunting will be rewarded. [em]Agency: Forland & Patterson. (Jan.) [/em]