Skinwalkers is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the seventh in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, published in 1986. The film version, Skinwalkers, was adapted for television for the PBS Mystery! series in 2002.

Murders are happening all over the huge reservation, and Lt. Leaphorn can see no pattern. Then, someone makes an attempt on Jim Chee's life, and the two work together for the first time to solve these crimes.

The novel won two awards, the 1988 Anthony Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Spur Award for Best Western Novel. Reviews at the time of publication praised it highly: "Hillerman brings together his two series characters--middle-aged, cynical Lieut. Joe Leaphorn and young, mystical Officer Jim Chee--without in any way diminishing the stark power and somber integrity that have distinguished previous exploits of the Navajo Tribal Police." The writing is "lively and extremely descriptive" and author Hillerman was "a master of character, scene, and plot". A New York Times review called this the breakout novel for Hillerman, when sales began to surge and recognition increased.

Jim Chee wakes from restless sleep about 2:30 am, hearing the cat enter through the cat door into his trailer. When Chee is out of bed, three shotgun blasts come through the trailer wall over his bed, tearing apart his mattress instead of him. In daylight, he finds where a vehicle leaking oil had parked in the night and the footprints of a small person. This is added to the list of unsolved homicides facing Lt. Joe Leaphorn, who asks that Chee be assigned full-time to aid him in solving the homicides of Irma Onesalt, Dugai Endocheeney, and Wilson Sam, and to find who shot at Chee. Captain Largo agrees.

The first connection among these homicides comes when they learn that Endocheeney received a letter from the office where Irma Onesalt worked. Then Leaphorn learns of the list of people for whom she sought death dates, though some on the list were alive when she was posing her question. Leaphorn and Chee learn to communicate effectively with each other, as they pursue the investigation. Chee sleeps away from his trailer bed, fearing a repeat attack until the culprit is found. The next link among the cases is small bone beads, made from a long-dead bovine. One was in the shotgun shells that entered Chee's trailer; another was in the knife wounds that killed Endocheeney; and one was found in Bistie's wallet when he was taken in for questioning.

Leaphorn and Chee go to Bistie's home to talk again, after he was set free by public defender Janet Pete. No one is home, evidence exists of someone recently dragged out of the hogan. As they follow tracks outdoors, someone shoots Leaphorn in his right arm. After he is taken to the hospital at Gallup, Chee and other officers follow the drag marks to find Bistie's corpse, dead from two gunshots to the chest, likely from the same gun that hit Leaphorn's arm. Chee observes a small mark above the bullet wounds on Bistie's body, likely from a crystal gazer who made a cut and claimed to take bone from his body, telling Bistie it was from a skinwalker. They do not catch the shooter. Chee gets two letters. One is from Mary Landon saying she will not return to the reservation. The other is from a client for a Blessing Way ceremony, a pleasing prospect.

The belief or superstition of skinwalkers involves the skinwalker somewhat magically blowing a bit of bone into a victim, who will die unless the skinwalker is killed. Bistie's daughter thinks her father had been trying to kill a skinwalker, to regain his own life, which would end soon by untreatable liver cancer. She did not call the public defender for her father. Janet Pete says Mr. Curtis Atcitty called her, but Bistie told her he knew no such man. Pete thinks this Atcitty used her to get Bistie out of jail both before he might talk to the police and so he could be killed. Another client, Irma Onesalt, was shot 10 days after she approached Pete for help on her list.

Leaphorn learns from Shorty McGinnis that Wilson Sam had received a letter from Irma Onesalt about two months earlier, making enough links among the victims for Leaphorn. He brings Emma to the hospital for tests. Chee visits the Badwater Clinic, learning of the argument between Onesalt and Yellowhorse from Mrs. Billie at the desk. He then proceeds to his meeting at Dinebito Wash with Alice Yazzie to arrange the Blessing Way ceremony. Captain Largo knows where Chee is; Leaphorn pursues him after learning that it is an empty home where the meeting is set up. Leaphorn meets Lenny Skeet in Piñon, where they both drive to the hogan. Chee realizes too late that he has been set up. A young mother shoots him in the back with her automatic shotgun as he runs. With the door of the hogan between them, she tells him he is a skinwalker who marked her baby for death. She tells him Dr. Yellowhorse told her Chee was a witch, a sorcerer. He tells her he is not. Lenny Skeet and Leaphorn arrive to find Chee barely alive in that hogan. They bring him to Badwater Clinic, where he murmurs, "Woman, baby dying", before his treatment began.