Finders

Set in England, this enigmatic first novel centers on 16-year-old Helen, who is riding a crowded train with her grandfather when he has a fatal heart attack. At the moment of his death, Helen ""sees"" herself with him on the beach, watching a man in a gray silk suit. This is the first indication that the elderly man has passed on to his granddaughter the special vision that made him a ""finder,"" capable of locating missing things or people and of experiencing the past. Rather incredibly, the girl abandons her grandfather's body on the train and runs away to his cottage in a seaside village, where she again encounters the mysterious man in the gray silk suit. Readers will have to work to decipher Dean's rather muddled plot, which follows Helen's attempts to make sense of her disturbing visions (including the sinking of a 17th-century ship and the torture of a 13th-century ""merman"" captured from the sea) and of the gray-suited man's oddly beguiling yet ominous presence. Though Dean's narrative contains some intriguing imagery, its frequently cryptic dialogue and unanswered questions may leave its audience more puzzled than entertained. Ages 12-up. (May)