The plot of What’s Bred in the Bone is set in motion by the confession of a frustrated biographer, Simon Darcourt, that he is unable to get at the truth of the life of Francis Cornish. What follows is a biography as no human chronicler could ever tell it, presented by the Lesser Zadkiel, the angel of biography, and the Daimon Maimas, whose function lies somewhere between being Francis’s guardian angel and his indwelling spirit.

Darcourt lays out the central mystery of the novel when he reveals his concern that Francis may have faked some pictures that have become quite famous as having been painted by the old masters. Arthur, a conservative banker, hovers on the verge of canceling the biography altogether, while Darcourt frets that the work may be unwritable due to lack of evidence.

Davies follows his belief (made clear in his earlier novels) that childhood holds the keys to a life. In the case of Francis Cornish, much of his future is shaped by events that take place well prior to his conception. His mother, Mary-Jacobin (or Mary-Jim) McRory, becomes pregnant by a temporary staff worker at a swank hotel during her London debutante season. Frantic, the family arranges a marriage of convenience to Major Francis Cornish, a rather stiff, impoverished, but ambitious suitor. Further, the women of the family try, unsuccessfully, to induce an abortion. Their efforts only succeed in producing some monstrous birth defects in the child, subsequently known as Francis I. Officially said to be dead in early childhood, he is actually kept in an upper-story room and known to the malicious townspeople as the Looner. Francis eventually becomes aware of his brother’s existence through his association with the local undertaker and McRory bootlegger Zadok Hoyle, who turns out to be the Looner’s biological father.

Francis, a solitary child by nature, is further isolated by his family’s wealth in working class Blairlogie. He turns to art, aided by three sources: his great aunt Mary-Ben’s collection of art reprints, a learn-to-draw book by Harry Furniss, and his intimacy with the human body through his association with Zadok. He continues his studies in art at the University of Toronto and Oxford University. There, three fateful meetings take place. He encounters, and later marries, his cousin, the faithless Ismay Glasson, who ultimately deserts him for a quixotic leftist and a disastrous stint in the Spanish Civil War. He also makes the acquaintance of Tancred Saraceni, master art restorer, smuggler, and secret anti-Nazi, with whom he will work during the war years and after. Finally, he is recruited (largely through his father’s intelligence work) by “Uncle” Jack Copplestone, who becomes his spymaster.

When, after Oxford, Francis goes to Schloss Düsterstein, he serves two masters: Saraceni, who is restoring old paintings and smuggling as many out of Nazi hands as he can, and British Intelligence, for which he counts the number of railway cars bearing their human cargo to the nearby concentration camp. He succeeds at both endeavors, owing to his talents for art and secrecy. In Bavaria, he also meets his one true love, Ruth Nibsmith, who turns out also to be a spy for British Intelligence and who is eventually killed in the bombing of London. While with Saraceni, he also achieves his two greatest achievements: the exposure of an alleged Old Master as a forgery in very public circumstances, and his two mature paintings in the Old Master style. One is a portrait of F. X. Bouchard (the dwarf tailor of Blairlogie, who is driven to suicide by the cruelty of the locals) as a court...