Book Review: "The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man" by W. Bruce Cameron

"The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man" by W. Bruce Cameron
First published in 2014
319 pages
My rating: 4 out of 5
Image from Goodreads

Sometimes you just need a silly, charming, feel-good kind of book, and that's exactly what W. Bruce Cameron delivers here -- with some mystery, a little romance, an absolutely loveable dog and the ghost of a murdered Realtor thrown in.

Once destined for the NFL, Ruddy McCann lives in small-town Michigan and works as a repo man, a thankless job taking back vehicles when people default on payments. One night he has a strange dream -- a dream in which he's chased down and murdered -- and the next day he starts hearing a voice in his head claiming to be Alan Lottner, victim of a homicide.

Ruddy, of course, thinks he's going crazy. But Alan is really inside Ruddy's head, and he was really murdered, and he wants Ruddy to solve the crime. Once Ruddy comes to terms with the bizarre situation, he sets out to find the killers.

I loved the dialogue between Ruddy and Alan Lottner, by turns hilarious and heartwarming -- especially after their relationship is complicated when Ruddy meets Lottner's pretty twentysomething daughter. I loved the moments Ruddy shared with his dog, proving that he's really just a ol' big softie at heart. I even loved learning the tricks of the repo trade -- especially the scenes in which Ruddy battles it out with a guard goose. I even loved meeting the crazy residents of Kalkasa, Michigan.

"The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man" reminded me a bit of one of Janet Evanovich's early Stephanie Plum books -- just replace somewhat hapless bounty hunter with somewhat hapless repo man. They've both got a great mix of mystery, humor, romance and a couple of almost unbelievably idiotic characters. "Midnight Plan" was a romp of a novel that made me smile and kept me turning pages. It was definitely a departure from "A Dog's Purpose" or "The Dogs of Christmas," but Cameron did a good job with his first funny mystery and I'm interested to see what he writes next.

Quotable quote: "I had my book, my dog, and my chair. What else did a man need?"