Jane Arnold, a lively lady in her seventies, is in Manhattan for once when she discovers the body of a tobacconist who has been shot. Little does she know that the cause of the crime will follow her home to Virginia....

FOXTRACKS is based around a winter's foxhunting, and the popular author Rita Mae Brown makes it clear that in the American version of the sport, foxes are chased but not intentionally killed. The grey fox is native to America and settlers imported the European counterpart, the larger red fox, to provide a better day's hunting. Both kinds are shown in this hunting series and the hunt puts out food for them during a hard winter. A day's sport for Jane and the hunt turns to something more sinister when a decaying body is discovered by hounds in the woods. Perhaps the man met with an accident during deer season... but he was known as a petty crook who moved moonshine and anything else, so it seems his sins have caught up with him.

A second tobacconist is murdered in Boston and Jane starts to look into tax rates around the states, seeing where tobacco, a traditional Virginia crop, is taxed the most - making it more profitable to ship black market cigarettes. The peril is not over yet....

While it may be authentic to depict Virginia natives as complaining about the discouragement of smokers and taxation of tobacco products, and China has become the largest producer of cigarettes, in a world running short of food and swamped with health care issues I did think that other views could have been provided to balance the debate. For instance, the hundreds of chemicals added to each cigarette are now listed on websites, but no character alluded to this fact.

Jane and her horses, hounds and foxes - which talk amongst themselves - are as always entertaining and there is a dearth of in-depth police evidence so the tale is not too gory. Mystery fans can enjoy FOXTRACKS knowing that no fox was harmed during the making of this adventure.