Jane Arnold rides again, this time in pursuit of a killer riding with her own hunt.

The first signs of trouble are far from Virginia, in New York City, where "Sister" Jane Arnold, her lover Gray Lorillard, and two of the young ladies recently graduated from Custis Hall, and now attending Princeton, are attending the annual Masters of Foxhounds Association dinner. During this New York interlude, Jane and Tootie visit a tobacco shop to buy a gift for Gray, and meet a charming, Cuban-born tobacco merchant.

Within moments after their departure, the tobacco seller is dead, murdered, with a package of cigarettes bearing the name "American Smokes" left on his chest. It's not a brand she's ever heard of, but except for their proximity to the crime, it's a minor mystery, far from where they live their lives.

Until there's a nearly identical murder in a tobacco shop in Boston. And then a tobacco warehouse in Illinois burns down.

Jane Arnold's mind can't let go of it, and she starts digging for information on American Smokes, and on why a legal product like cigarettes might be smuggled internally in the United States. Meanwhile, she's also dealing with problems created by a rival hunt, and the sudden attacks on a teacher at Custis Hall, Tariq Al McMillan, by a local congressman determined to boost his career by targeting "terrorists," i.e., Muslims or anyone he thinks might be Muslim.

Of course, all these problems are interconnected, and Sister is in danger from directions she doesn't imagine.

As always, we also benefit from information Sister doesn't have: the observations and comments of the foxes, dogs, and horses in her household and her hunt area.

Overall, this is a good visit with familiar characters, and an enjoyable playing out of the ongoing, changing relationships among the regular characters. The resolution of the mystery is a bit disappointing, but it's almost a minor point, since the real purpose here is the time spent with the regular characters, the hunt life, and the animals.

Recommended to fans of the series.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

Fabulous book, and I so enjoy reading such great descriptions of the countryside and fox hunting in Virginia! I'm on to the next book, LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE, so I'll be ready for an ARC I won to review for LibraryThing. ( )

As usual, Ms. Brown mixes causes with descriptions of hunting and the mystery in Fox Tracks. The copy I listened to was narrated by Ms. Brown herself. I wish she would practice reading sentences so that she's not pausing where she shouldn't be.

The descriptions of fox hunting and its rules, as well as caring for the foxes one hunts are okay for this reader who has never hunted a fox and almost certainly never will.

I didn't guess the killer. The conversations among the animal characters with each other were amusing when they weren't didactic. (I particularly enjoyed the response Inky the fox made to the hounds during one hunt.) The hanging tree is still haunted.

Already knew that Coptic Cristians exist, but the information might surprise readers who assume that all Arabs are Muslims. There's a congress critter out to get publicity and doesn't care whose life he ruins to get it.

Crawford the ego-driven rich man is still trying to get back at Sister for a well-earned public slap she gave him in an earlier book. He does manage to get exclusive hunting rights to a place the Jefferson Hunt has enjoyed as well as a third person to ride with him when he hunts with his pack (besides his wife and his huntsman). I was a bit surprised that no one corrected Crawford, who showed that he doesn't know the difference between libel (written defamation of character) and slander (spoken defamation).

Sister isn't sleeping with anyone but her gentleman friend in this book, which was a pleasant surprise, especially since I don't recall if she's careful to protect herself from infection.

It was nice to find out how the Custis Hall girls who have graduated are doing.

One thing the author could not make me feel is sorry for the plight of former small tobacco farmers. Both of my parents' lives were cut short by their smoking and two of my siblings have had their hearts damaged by theirs. I hope they find better crops to grow.

There's a 'save' for one of the characters that I have trouble buying after watching an episode of Mythbusters dealing with the subject, but that didn't really spoil the scene for me.

If you liked the earlier books in this series, you'll probably like this one. ( )