I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Youngest daughter was assigned this in school, so I read it. It is classed as a Young Adult book.

Ed is a taxi driver with no prospects and no ambition, with a mother who dislikes him, friends without ambition, some of whom are on the dole, and a platonic love for a woman who is afraid of love and so substitutes sex. The book opens with him face down on the floor during a bank robbery by an incompetent bank robber, whom he soon finds himself capturing. In the flurry of publicity, he receives in the mail an ace of diamonds with the lines 45 Edgar Street, midnight; 13 Harrison Avenue, 6 pm; and 6 Macedoni Street, 5:30 am.

He investigates and finds that, Amelie-like, he is to intervene in the lives of others. When he finally finishes, another message arrives.

The plot is pleasantly surreal, the language (first person) is grungy, and how he eventually figures out what to do on each occasion is left mysterious. An almost supernatural insight points him to his targets, and he (after watching and figuring) seems almost supernaturally guided into the right thing to do. I missed a detail or two, and thought for a long time that the story was set in Britain (actually Australia). The story arc is the maturing of the hero.

The story has some flaws. The priest he is supposed to help seems a bit uninterested in the supernatural, but perhaps that's the kind they get in Australia. Keith and Daryl seem to represent some kind of karmic balancing, but they don't mesh in the story well at all. The biggest howler is the penultimate chapter in which the author makes an appearance, wrapping up the mystery by saying that he managed everything. Perhaps Zusak is trying to make some point about God and omnipotence here (author=God), but more likely he is being self-indulgent.

You could do worse. I don't plan to buy it.