A Damien Chubb Footy Mystery by Alan Wearne

What kind of time warp is this? Collingwood has made the grand final. Their ace full forward is missing. Yes, Johnny Moomba, odds on for the Brownlow, Rhodes Scholar and Aboriginal land rights activist has been kidnapped! From Sydenham to Dingley, form Kew to Rowville, murky forces are at work. Through this mayhem ambles Damien Chubb, ex-bomber ruckman, private eye to the sporting world, laconic centre of calm in a Melbourne gone even more berserk than usual. It's heading towards the last Saturday in September. Anything can happen. It does.

Alan Wearne is one of the great masters of what can be done with the Australian vernacular. This is an alternative history of Australian rules, rendered rich and strange by one of the great connoisseurs of suburban Melbourne. Damien Chubb and Johnny Moomba are great acquisitions to the rogue's gallery of football myth. The ghosts of everyone from John Eliot to Dermott Brereton flit through this cosmic extravaganza which provides us with every possible archetype you could poke a stick at: a rich brew of sporting Australia as it is and as cosmic nostalgia can refashion it.      Peter Craven

Filled with unique takes not only on football but life in general, seeing things from both sides of the fence. Alan Wearne has given us The Great Australian Rules Novel.      James 'Charlie' Manson

Damien Chubb is the Philip Marlowe of the forward pocket.      Shane Maloney

Review by Tim Thorne.