Previous Hillerman novels featured either Lt. Joe Leaphorn or Officer Jim Chee, but in Skinwalkers the two policemen are brought together to work on a peculiar group of murders that point to the involvement of Navajo witchcraft.

Hillerman pairs Leaphorn's legendary reluctance to give credence to things occult with Chee's strong affinity for Navajo tradition and ceremony, thus creating an investigative team that combines the best of two cultures.

Throughout the novel, Jim Chee is forced to examine his feelings about Mary Landon, the blond, blue-eyed schoolteacher with whom he has been emotionally involved but who has returned to her native Wisconsin. Their relationship, which flourished in the earlier Chee novels, is disintegrating under the weight of their individual cultural loyalties. Chee's attempts to come to terms with Mary's refusal to live on the reservation and her insistence that he learn to live in her world...