3 out of 4 stars
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A Sticky Business and Short Stories (2015), by Mel King, is a 170-page book of historical stories which includes one novel and 14 short stories; it is available as an e-book or as a paperback. The novel examines issues such as God's motives and His mysterious plan, loss of faith, fate, life after death, heresy, the existence of God, the sufferings of righteous people, church dogma, and blasphemy. The short stories bring up topics such as falsified war records, the Inquisition, organized crime, and suicide. The author is a retired trial lawyer who now has an incurable disease, and is facing some of the questions posed in the novel.
Mr. King notes that the novel is based on an old philosophical question: "If God is righteous, why does He allow so many righteous to suffer while many sinners lead prosperous, happy lives?" The historical event that forms the basis for the novel took place in Boston during January 1919, when a storage tank filled with two million gallons of molasses burst, killing 21 people. The two protagonists in the novel are a trial lawyer who represents victims of the event, and a young priest who questions God’s motives for allowing the incident to occur.
A Sticky Business begins inauspiciously, with four pages of somewhat drab historical background. It might have been better to start with the explosion, then fill in the history as needed, with more focus on the people involved. Occasionally, the author breaks the narrative by speaking directly to the reader, e.g., "It is still in operation today." He ends the story with a paragraph expressing his personal views; this would have been more appropriate in the epilogue.
Mr. King does an excellent job of sticking to the main theme. However, too much of the novel reads like excerpts from encyclopedia articles. The story would be more interesting with a closer interweaving of these facts with the characters' actions. Furthermore, the courtroom scenes are little more than a verbatim transcript of the proceedings. The author, who was a trial lawyer for more than 40 years, certainly has the knowhow to do better than that.
The short stories are interesting and educational, but the fictionalized aspects comprise only small portions of the stories. As in the novel, the author often speaks to the reader directly; however, this is less distracting than in the novel, because there is so little fiction in the short stories.
This book is good, but there is plenty of room for improvement. The novel would greatly benefit from an opening that immerses you in the action immediately. The grammatical errors are fairly minor (mostly in the form of absent hyphens in spelled-out numbers and compound adjectives), but need to be corrected. The book has no serious deficiency, so it has earned 3 out of 4 stars. If the author included more fiction, especially in the short stories, it would help immerse the reader into the tales, especially if he seamlessly incorporated the fiction with the historical events instead of simply reciting history.
The novel will appeal to people who enjoy debates about religious issues such as God's motives and His mysterious plan; the short stories will appeal to people who like reading vignettes about historical figures and events. However, if you are looking for excitement and suspense, you will be disappointed.
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A STICKY BUSINESS and short stories
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I can relate. I've read a few books that were very good, but I thought a few tweaks would have propelled them into the Excellent column.
