Finder (novel)

The main point-of-view character has renamed himself 'Orient', in the sense of 'align directions', on arrival in Bordertown. He is nicknamed "Finder" for his magical gift that lets him—or compels him to—locate things and people. His working partner is Tick-Tick, an elf woman whose gift for making and fixing technical things was as disturbing to her parents as Orient's talent was to his. A mysterious death opens the plot, making it something of a murder mystery as well as fantasy, and Orient's collaboration with volunteer cop Sunny Rico and her working partner Linn, also an elf, adds a police procedural element. Romance creeps in as Orient and Sunny cope with the plot's sequence of disasters.

The opening death appears to be related to distribution of a new drug, of which the target demographic is humans who want to be elves: it physically changes them. However, when both Tick-Tick and Linn fall ill along with many of the elvish residents of Bordertown, the drug-affected humans are understood to be carriers for a virulent mutation of a rare disease of elves. Discovery of just who has let this plague loose and with what motivation takes the plot to its close.

Terri Windling characterized Finder as "a mature and emotionally rich mystery novel . . . witty, stylish, and ultimately moving."^[1]