Mr Cleansheets

by Adrian Deans

Eric Judd is 39 and his girlfriend wants him to give up playing football. Eric (aka Mr Cleansheets) is a goalkeeping legend at his amateur Sydney club because in his youth he received a letter inviting him to trial with Manchester United. The letter said to “come when you’re ready” – and six days before his 40th birthday, Eric is finally ready.

Inspired by the dying wish of his Uncle Jimmy, Eric travels to England, but does not quite receive the welcome he had hoped for. Instead, he encounters all manner of villains: murderous football hooligans, Irish mafia, dodgy football agents, beautiful pop stars, international terrorists and a range of supporting players with any number of overt and hidden agendas.

He also plays football.

Genres: Fiction

525 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Adrian Deans is a lawyer, journalist and novelist. He has been writing seriously for 30 years and in that time has seen his darkly comic speculative fiction stories gradually morph into darkly comic crime - then back to spec fiction. His novels, Mr Cleansheets (Vulgar Press, 2010) and Straight Jacket (High Horse, 2013) received some critical acclaim and Straight Jacket was optioned by Ealing Studios in the UK. The Fighting Man was his debut historical novel (High Horse, 2017), but in 2020 he blended offbeat crime with spec fiction to produce Welcome to Ord City. His latest novel, Asparagus Grass (2023), sees Adrian on the edge of science fiction and firmly entrenched among Australia's more original storytellers.

Adrian is represented by Golvan Arts Management.

Reviews

[Matthew White · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally do football books ... but I did do this football book. And it was a proper romp. It's the shaggiest of shaggy dog stories, and as twist piled upon twist, things came perilously close to juvenile time after time. But ... it works! There's such verve to it, the plotting is so skillful, and there's such a sense of joy bubbling away under the surface, that somehow Adrian Dean pulls it off. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere.