Melted Wax (Paperback) | Released: 24 Jun 2015

Melted Wax is a modern take on the Icarus myth, and the third book in the author's 'Williams Series'. True Story basis: In the 1960's an unlikely sequence of unintended events saw a small Australian syndicate own two Dutch flagged foreign-going ships. Ignorant of the risks, but smiled upon by Lady Luck, they sent their first 500 ton ship on an eventful voyage from Rotterdam via Majunga and Djakarta to Australia, where the syndicate found it was stuck with an expensive white elephant, until they fluked a lucrative offshore charter. Buoyed by unfounded confidence, they expanded with a 1500 ton ship and another offshore charter. Then, no surprise, problems began, increased and multiplied. Melted Wax is a fictionalized account of that venture. To survive in such a field much more than luck is needed. Nick Williams's trawler-skipper background may have given him confidence, but isn't enough to prepare him for international shipping, for the inflexibility and complexity of government regulation or the stranglehold of unions on the Australian waterfront. A minnow in deep water, circled by sharks of the business world, he is an accident in waiting. "A genuinely compelling read. Its great strengths are the subject... and... Nick, who... never loses our sympathy... maintaining... our sympathy for a potentially unlikeable character is a difficult balancing act... but you do it." (Manuscript Assessor) Melted Wax sees the continuation of the relationship between Nick and Angie which enthralled readers as it unfolded from the pages of the previous book Puri Puri. Thrust into a world of money and power, Nick yields to temptations. Too often for Angie, concerned by what he's become. His relationship with Hank, the American charterer's operations manager develops as Nick with no family replaces Hank's dead son. Hard working, hard living, hard drinking, Hank is not the best role model for Nick, but his death jolts Nick into a much needed but too late self assessment as his own world begins to fall apart, spiralling downwards at ever increasing speed. "The novel has ...a fascinating central myth, translated into the rise and fall of an accidental venture capital warrior whose ambition and inability to see the personal cost of his rise takes him too close to the sun. Everyone (else) can see... Nick himself doesn't begin to glimpse what he's become until it's too late. ...The detail is great, the dialogue works." (Manuscript Assessor)
About the Author: Now retired, John Bell lives in Queensland, Australia, with wife Carol. They travel widely. He's also lived in New Guinea, Tasmania, Western Australia, Switzerland and S.E. Asia. A paper boy when young, he's worked as a surveyor's chainman, brushed scrub, cut timber, worked in a sawmill, been a prelim. boy while at university, and cut sugar cane. He's grown Macadamias and run cattle, been a restaurateur, wildlife park owner, property developer, storage operator, senior public servant, practising solicitor, Justice of the Peace and tax agent, as well as grown tropical fruit commercially. Was part owner/manager of two ships, 500 and 1100 tons, working from Europe and around the S.W. Pacific. A keen sailor, water skier, pilot and spear fisherman, he completed National Service in the Royal Australian Navy. June 2013 saw him as navigator of a 1930 Model A Ford in the 5th Peking to Paris Endurance Rally, over 12,000 kilometres and through eight countries in 33 days. His rally blog can be accessed via www.johnbellbooks.com Melted Wax is Book Three in the author's Williams Series, following Book One Payback and Book Two Puri Puri. First published in 2008, Payback's first edition was a sell-out success, therefore this second edition timed to coincide with the first release of Books Two and Three. Book Four will follow.