Of a Game Bigger than Football

What game changer lies behind Camthorpe Football Club's sudden success?
Some dark corruption?
The FA and the police have their suspicions; the press is drooling for a scandal and a vicious local criminal is sure he's missing out on something lucrative. And, as though that's not enough, Cryon Genetics, the huge US company whose top scientist did a moonlight and hasn't been seen since, is pretty sure she has something to do with it.
But none of them knows Dave Biscay, Club Chairman and retired wine gum magnate. Since he mis-sold his company, he's been wracked with guilt over the jobs lost in the small Yorkshire community of Camthorpe where his factory once stood. If he could restore the former glory of the town's failing football club it might help atone and put his community on the map. But not if it can't be done fair and square. That would appal his sense of decency and his devotion to the fair game.
And what of Tom Fletcher, the gangly music student, football hater and scorn magnet, forced by bullying to retreat into a fantasy world of unrequited love where his cello accompanies dreams of the beautiful, unattainable Debbie North. Why would Tom, lying on his deathbed in Intensive Care, suddenly gulp down performance enhancers in order to realise an ambition he never had?
Then there's Sue Kemp, gaudy twenty-something, on the run from a brutal relationship, glad of a bar job in The Camthorpe Heifer. But Dave's wife begins to regret giving her the job. Maybe her interest in the football club and her fluttering eyelids are a ruse to make a sugar daddy of Dave. If she could wheedle enough money from him she might get herself out of her situation before her bloke finds her.
Meanwhile the team goes on, putting an end to a years-long losing streak by winning matches they have no business even to be playing.
Until the unforgettable night Dave meets Lost John. Lost John is not even human. He's only a prion. But he's also a medical breakthrough capable of saving the lives of billions.
That's the night a small group of people knot themselves into a single unit with one clear purpose: to keep Lost John out of the hands of criminal and vested interest. Because Lost John belongs to no-one and to everyone and because the only chance of realising his potential is to give him a level playing field when he is introduced into the world.
He takes Dave, Sue, Tom and a few of their friends into a dangerous world. They must face not only political power, vicious criminality and the constant suspicion of the authorities and press: they must face their own fears and self doubt as they question long held values and principles. Sometimes the thought of capitulation seems sweet.
Against all this, their only weapons are a gritstone sense of what's right and wrong, a bit of Yorkshire wiliness and a well-developed sense of humour. Will they win through? Perhaps. With the help of the members of a football squad totally unaware of the high stakes for which they are playing.
The action of William Hebden's debut novel is set in the near future in the former mining town of Camthorpe. Though it's quirky, something of a flight of fancy and filled with substantial dollops of blunt Yorkshire humour, it raises a few serious questions about the advance of biochemistry. Not that it seeks to provide any answers.
Take a look inside to see how it all begins in a Lebensborn in Nazi Germany.
Sometimes football is about more than football.