Rating: 
Summary: Rita Mae Brown is great at setting a scene...
Review: ...but she can't quite integrate those scenes into a truly satisfying mystery. I like Rita Mae Brown a lot. I can imagine helping her muck out stalls, riding cross country with her, sitting down to a cup of tea. But her books seem to be written for fifth graders, not adults.
"Full Cry" is packed with interesting watercolor vinettes of foxhunting, as written by an author with a deep love of the sport. It is a sport steeped in tradition, with a lot of beauty and a lot of mud, blood, and guts. Anyone remotely interested in why people foxhunt, and the history of the sport are well served by this book.
One might quibble about just how much the foxes enjoy it...or whether the fox is always allowed to get away without being torn to pieces. Rita Mae Brown's affectation of having many of the animals speak doesn't work as well in this book as in her other mysteries, as having created each animal as an individual, she is apparently reluctant to have natural consequences play out: not just foxes dying, but hounds being torn apart by raccoons or mountain lions, and housepets getting eaten by coyotes. Don't worry: these things just don't happen in her foxhunting universe.
Why harp on this? Because it's a mystery novel, ultimately, and the sharpness of the mystery is dulled by the cuteness of cat, hound, horse, coyote, mountain lion, great-horned owl, etc., working things out with a little bit of verbal sparring. Readers are asked to enter into the very frank and natural world of foxhunting, but there seems to be a real reluctance to treat any character with real depth, and therefore real seriousness. Although the main human character, Sister, is set up to be interesting, I find over the course of the book to have difficulty separating one human from another. (The animals are drawn a bit better.) Human conversations tend towards formulaic, plot twists are predictable, but then you arrive at yet another splendid description of waking up at dawn to prepare for a foxhunt in January. You can smell the snow on the air, hear the crunch of the horses' hooves, feel the fan of the hounds' sterns as they wave. So maybe the best way to read this book is to think of it as a series of foxhunting sketches strung together loosely by a little plot and not much mystery.
If you are a fan of Rita Mae Brown, or are interested in foxhunting, you will like this book. As a mystery, it's not very substantial.
Rating: 
Summary: Off Track
Review: Brown wqas simply not up to par! I found it a struggle to get through the book when usally I can't put them down. It was obviosly a gross mistake as far as jacket blurb goes. Who let this get by? I hope Rite Mae Brown can get back on track. If not, I will loose one of my favorite authors!
Rating: 
Summary: only for foxers
Review: First I have to admit to a Rita Mae Brown bias; I love her work. However, this is just not up to par. The story, not really a mystery, barely a novel, goes off on far too many side excursions with fox hunt stories, hunt clothes, brand names to buy, hoof care for horses, etc. etc. A real yawn if you aren't a "Master" of the hunt.
As usual, Brown manages to work in a few things to annoy everyone (a fact that usually has me chuckling); i.e., animals are superior to people, biracial sexual encounters between senior citizens, her characters opinions on some people just being 'born bad'etc.)
Her editor was asleep a the wheel this time. With about 100 less pages this could have been a good book, As is, Brown's fans will be disappointed. Best advice: If you (like me) MUST read anything she writes, borrow it - don't buy. Save your money for saddle soap.
Rating:
Summary: misleading and incomplete
Review: I would not characterize this book a a murder mystery...for one thing, there was absolutely no mystery about it...and it was hard to get too worked up about the victims. As a horse person, I was enchanted by the decription of the hunting club...but the author assumes that the reader knows a lot more than she does. The dialog between the animals are amusing, but I had to wonder how the author knew this was what the animals were thinking. As a dog and horse owner, I have to say that I don't believe my dogs or horses think this way...they are pretty food-centric.
I am going to try the "outfoxed" book as from the reviews, it sounds like this would be the better choice.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Winner for Rita Mae Brown
Review: I'm a big fan of Brown's novels and mysteries, and her latest, "Full Cry," did not disappoint me.I was hooked from the first pages. It's a great read, especially for horse lovers, giving us an up-close look at the fox-hunting culture - particularly Virginia's deeply traditional version. According to her, for example, fox hunters prefer not to kill healthy foxes at the end of a hunt; instead, they are "run to ground" and left to run another day. According to her, the foxes actually come to enjoy the chase. Could this really be true? Not only is the plot fascinating, including an unusual twist on a murder mystery - who IS killing all those drunks down at the train station, and why? - it's also packed with odds and ends of information. The reader learns, for instance, much about the history of fox hunting and the training of the dogs; perhaps more even than horse-related information. As always, Brown's animal-empathetic technique of allowing them a point of view and voice as characters in their own right, remains an improbable but enchanting hallmark of her style. In this novel, Brown demonstrates a deeply empathetic concern for the minorities and the marginal in society. I can agree with her there, although sometimes she does fall into a bit of preachiness. Altogether, however, a wonderful read, especially appealing to animal lovers.
Rating:
Summary: A self-righteous foxhunting how-to manual, NOT a novel
Review: Let me say first that I usually enjoy Ms. Brown's work, especially her series on Juts and Wheezie. I also liked Outfoxed and was diverted by Hotspur, so I was excited when Full Cry was published. WHAT a disappointment! There is barely a plot and the characters truly are no more than a list of names (there also are some serious editing errors; anyone else catch the mistaken reference to Fairy Thatcher?) And while I've enjoyed learning about foxhunting from her other novels, I'd guess that about 60% of this book is simply a description of the how-to details of the sport. Thirty-five percent is a self-righteous, complacent sermon about blaming the victim (for example, Ms. Brown seems to subscribe to the theory that all alcoholics have to do is quit bending their elbow). In fact, her tone reminds me of the resentful bitterness of a person who's just come out of a bad relationship.
I also found it interesting how she argues repeatedly that certain people are born irrevocably bad, yet simultaneously complains about society's ills. You can't have it both ways, Rita Mae; you can't bemoan social ills yet espouse the belief that the people creating those ills are unfixable.
The remaining 5% of the book is plot and character development. Ms. Brown needs to devote herself entirely either to being a MFH or a novelist, because at this point she obviously cannot successfully perform both roles.
Rating:
Summary: Fun book-despite misleading jacket blurb
Review: Maybe you have to be not only a mystery lover but a horse person as well, but I LOVE her books. Despite the totally misleading jacket blurb (Sam Lorillard not only doesn't die, he's not a harvard grad and Sister does not make her announcements at the New Years hunt, nor does the story have anything to do with another hunts practices-what is up with this? The publisher went with details from a much revised first draft???), Brown's stories based on the fictional Jefferson Hunt are engaging, fun and full of very likeable and believable characters. I hope this isn't her last in this series!
Rating:
Summary: What's going on with Rita Mae?
Review: Once upon a time, there was a woman who wrote for a living, and people were edified, entertained, infuriated, intrigued, or titillated. She'd had an interesting life in interesting times and with some interesting, dynamic, famous people. Then she grew older, "settled down", became extremely domestic in the countryside, and let her writing get so sloppy and slapdash it would embarrass an 8th grader-a bright 8th grader.
I, too, am a horse person; I own, ride, have taken part in the hunt(although out here in CA it's coyotes, not foxes-and we usually catch nothing, thank God); in my review of "Outfoxed" I made a suggestion echoed by another reader here: Rita Mae should definitely write NON-fiction, sticking to what she knows and loves best: riding, hunting, dogs, Virginia country-elite living. Nothing wrong with that. But instead she has to pay the bills and feed the demands of her editors(who are, after all, in the publishing business to make money-the more, the better), and it's just so obvious from this effort that her heart isn't in it; the "characters" are paper-thin, and resultingly boring-even the animal ones. The "mystery"-well,I am the dimmest of mystery readers-usually way behind the solution, though I hate to admit it, in even a mediocre mystery-but in this book(and her other Sneaky Pies)it's so flimsily plotted that not only can you figure it out immediately-you couldn't care less! What a shame. There's such a thing as stringing one's talent and reputation along a bit too far. This is proof.
Rating:
Summary: Sadly, disappointing
Review: Others have written this book is disappointing because the book description and inside flap blurb don't match the story. This is the least of the novel's problems! I have to preface my review by stating that I'm horse owner, all-around animal lover, and have read all of Rita Mae's work. I'm a big fan. In the case of this novel, I am baffled that her editor didn't ask her to go back to the drawing board, and I wondered if a crazed fan stole an early rough draft of the book from her desk drawer and somehow got it published on the sly. More bothersome than the fact that foxhunting triva seems to eclipse the mystery storyline is the tendency for Brown to use the novel as vehicle for two things: her opinions on human nature, and a "how-to" manual for rural life. It just got so tedious! Lists of brands her characters prefer, how to fix a hole if a dog digs under the fence, how the Ford F350 Dually handles for everyday driving (she writes about those friggin' trucks in every novel. Enough, please!), how to interpret a foxhound pedigree--geeeeez.
The characters aren't interesting or fully developed, and this seems like unedited stream-of-consciousness rather than a well-crafted tale--which is what Brown usually produces. I'll continue to buy her work, and sure hope this one is the exception.
Rating:
Summary: Don't let authors narrate their own work!
Review: SLOPPY recording; I'm surprised, as Recorded Books usually does a good job. Brown is a bad choice to read her own book; her voice cracks and wavers like a 13 year-old pre-pubescent boy, she has some annoying pronounciations ('conner' for 'corner'), she stresses the wrong words in a sentence, and on at least 3 occasions, she repeats a sentence to correct her reading ('enveloped by a veal (pause) enveloped by a veil' being the most glaring example), which Recorded Books should have corrected in post-production. Perhaps the worst 'professional' reading I've yet heard. Story itself is so-so, but the recording flat out stinks.
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