It posits the abrupt intrusion of Elfland, a walled territory of unspecified extent, into the everyday World.

Though not so large a place as Minneapolis, where the author's War for the Oaks is set, this context puts Finder into the urban fantasy category.

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.

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.