text: I have progressively become more and more disappointed with Rita Mae Brown's books in the past decade. Her early books were utterly magnificent; now, she rarely if ever deviates from her favorite (and by now, utterly boring) themes -- Southern manners, horse bloodlines, and foxhunting. Blessedly, "Whisker of Evil" was foxhunting-free, but suffered from a heavy-handed overload of the previous two. Rita Mae Brown would be wise to remember that there is a big world outside of her corner of Virginia, and many of us have grace, manners, and respect for others -- and we don't take kindly to being told that only Virginians understand these things. That's just simply not true.
  
  That said, there were some delightful aspects of "Whisker of Evil" -- the mystery itself was great, the animal characters were adorable as ever, and I loved learning more about Harry as a person and what makes her tick. Her quitting the post office was a great (and very unexpected) twist. I liked reading more about her home and her relationships. However, the stultifying minutiae of horse bloodlines was beyond me; was this directed at a heretofore-unknown segment of Rita Mae Brown's fan base? It was so out of context in this book; certain details contributed to the horses' relationships to one another, but she took it way too far and I found myself skipping pages. As well, I almost threw the book across the room when I came across a line that stated in so many words that only Virginians have manners. This is a common theme of Ms. Brown's and it is quite frankly offensive. There is a big, big world outside of Virginia -- Rita Mae Brown should know this, she has lived in it -- but her books and characters have become so parochial, insular and snobbish that it is an insult to those of us who do live elsewhere in that big world. I would have thought these kinds of statements were tongue-in-cheek if it wasn't such a recurring theme in so many of her books over the past decade. Enough already about Southern manners (a biased perception at best), ancestor worship, bloodlines (human and horse), and foxhunting. 
  
  Whatever happened to characters like Celeste Chalfonte
  