Of Repo Men and Their Dispossessed Lives : THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB by Mike Magnuson; HarperCollins $23, 304 pages

Repo men are the front-line soldiers of capitalism. In Mike Magnuson’s fine first novel, Gunnar (Cheese) Lund and Dewy Bishop patrol the slums of Columbus, Ohio, for $265 a week, wearing the uniform of Winky, the happy-face symbol of a rent-to-own firm that offers TVs, couches and refrigerators to people who are too poor to buy them.

They are also too poor to make their rental payments for long, but the company has allowed for that. Each item pays for itself in four months; the remaining 14 months of a typical contract are “pure profit.” So it’s less to make a buck than simply to uphold the system that Lund and Bishop are sent out to repossess the items when the payments stop.

Like soldiers, they lead dangerous lives. They are hated. Impoverished inner-city dwellers, clinging to cheap versions of the consumer goods most people in this country take for granted, aim shotguns at these blue-coveralled invaders, sic Rottweilers on them, curse and spit at them. Or stare at them in silent despair, like the 17-year-old unwed mother who has to lay her triplets on the floor after Lund and Bishop haul away her couch.

And, like soldiers, repo men have to be indoctrinated. Lund, who narrates the novel, is a recent arrival from Wisconsin, his head swarming with maxims from the firm’s training manual. These range from the commercially religious (“Winky says, You can always be proud of a good day’s work”) to the demonic (“Winky says, Lie only when you’re certain the customer will believe it”).

Bishop, black and at home in the ‘hood, is a good-hearted man who has resigned himself to the demands of what, despite his college education, is the only job he can find. He diverts himself by thinking up new and outrageous ways to put pressure on hard-core deadbeats.

Lund, however, is conspicuously white, and though he enjoys an easy rapport with Bishop, he can’t stop feeling out of place. Besides, even without the moral ambiguities of the repo trade, he has a heavy load on his conscience.

A pudgy, unkempt man of 28 who describes himself as “trailer park-and-tavern trash,” Lund gave up his dream of playing jazz trombone for an eight-year live-in relationship with a woman named Sara and the factory job that supported them. Three months before the novel begins, he left Sara and ran off to Ohio with his former drug dealer, Margaret, who has a trust fund and a 10-year-old son.

While Lund sweats and hustles as a repo man, Margaret attends Ohio State University, becomes enamored of radical feminism and grows increasingly critical of him. He, in turn, reverts to a pattern: In women he meets on the job--a customer, a prostitute--he keeps chasing the illusory hope of a different kind of love, a kind that will enable him, finally, to be faithful, a “decent man.”

Magnuson’s insight into Lund--a man who “often has a difficult time translating the good things he thinks about folks into good behavior that he can demonstrate toward them”--is one of the two reasons why “The Right Man for the Job” is such a promising debut.

The other is the quality of the writing. Magnuson seems incapable of a routine description or bit of dialogue; every sentence in this book merits close attention. For example, just before the violent and genuinely shocking climax, police come to the rental firm’s office and, without explanation, order Lund to ride in their squad car. He asks one officer, Gambino, where they’re going.

“With no pause, no neck flex to think it out, Gambino says, ‘Your friend Margaret’s in a bad way. She’s asked that we bring you to her.’ He adjusts his hat with steady and clean fingers. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’ ”

It’s the “no neck flex” and the “steady and clean fingers” that bring Gambino to life--that, multiplied by similar touches everywhere, make this such a compelling story about the lengths to which poverty of bank account and spirit can drive us.