HOUNDED TO DEATH
by Rita Mae Brown
More than foxes are marked for death in and around a central Virginia hunt club.
Jane Arnold, 73, better known as Sister, is exhibiting at the Mid-America Hound Show in Kentucky when one of her most promising young American foxhounds is stolen. She immediately suspects the obnoxious Mo Schneider, a wealthy man cordially disliked by just about everyone who knows him. Good news, bad news: Sister finds her hound along with Mo’s dead body. On returning to Virginia with her huntsman Shaker Crown and her protégée Tootie—a bright and beautiful prep-school grad who’d rather stay with Sister and work with hounds and horses than head to Princeton—Sister takes an injured horse to Hope Rogers, an equine veterinarian slated to become the next victim. Even after the police label her death a suicide, Sister maintains that Hope would never have killed herself. As Master of Foxhounds, Sister must spend her summer preparing the ground and the hounds for the fall hunt season. Though she tries to unearth clues to explain Hope’s death, she’s more inclined to give Mo’s killer a medal. Fall brings good hunting for both hounds and their determined master.
Yet another chatty tale of anthropomorphic pets and the beauties of Virginia hunt country (The Tell-tale Horse, 2007, etc.) with more obvious rewards for animal lovers than mystery lovers.