Children such as Isabel, who is mute with everyone except the animals, who can only look on as her brutal mother beats her brother while her dumb animal of a father does nothing, is more at home with the world. PC Philip Dobson can lose himself in the Northumbrian pipes, but still return to the responsibilities his inspector puts on him, but the local MAFF inspector, Colin Fenwick, is a lost cause - trembling when he has to appear before Ms Rigg and then breaking down and going native.
Unfortunately for the native fauna and flora - plant, animal and human - there are native spirits, too. One of them has a name - the Duergar; nothing but malevolence yearning to destroy everything living and willing to take on any form to do it.
Gus Smith has seen everything high on the hills - spirits that have broken men, spirits that have sent men hurling themselves over cliffs and cars off roads, and worse the madness that has entered cattle and seems to be bound in them by the bureaucracy of the ministry and its agents in the field, and is now entering men. As all of these are responsible for human deaths it is difficult to know which is the worst.
There are some unpleasant people along the way as well - but the newspaperman comes to a sticky end which perhaps allows readers to enjoy what is otherwise a near tragedy. FEATHER & BONE ends with a perfunctory closure - and a dubious solace to know that a murdered child's spirit lives on in a bird - but for those readers who want their Dark Fantasy to include both financial and spiritual misery, here it is.