GONE-ONE MORE TIME

[Mercyone]

Someone is kidnapping homeless people and stealing their internal organs and Jordan St. James and her sister Erin unwittingly but not unwillingly become involved.

What starts out as a simple case trying to find a little boy’s lost dog leads the sister’s to a more grisly discovery: a human skeleton. Jordan and Erin promise the boy they will do everything they can to find whoever did it. While searching they realize that both crimes are connected.

From the little evidence they’ve gathered they manage to narrow down their list of suspects. Fearing that Jordan and Erin are getting too close to learning the truth he and his accomplices send someone to attack one of the sisters hoping to slow them down. Instead it fuels the sisters’ anger and strengthens their resolve to get the evidence needed by the authorities to send them all to prison.

Lives hang in the balance and fear has a hold of the people of Los Angeles in GONE a 83,400 word suspense novel about former New York detective Jordan St. James who now calls Crescent Valley, California. Now that she is unemployed she uses her investigative skills to help people with the occasional assist from her sister Erin.

This is a story of committing crime in the name of love those eighteen years old and over which takes place over a few weeks and is told from the third person perspective in present day California.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to review my query. If you are interested in reading my book I can email it to you within a matter of minutes. I have also sent queries to other agents.

[Falen]

Someone is kidnapping homeless people and stealing their internal organs and Jordan St. James and her sister Erin unwittingly but not unwillingly become involved. I'm not really hooked by this opening. I would consider ditching it and starting with the second paragraph

What starts out as a simple case trying to find a little boy’s lost dog, leads the sister’s to a more grisly discovery: a human skeleton. Jordan and Erin promise the boy they will do everything they can to find whoever did it. why does the boy care about anything other than his lost dog? And how do they even know the skeleton is a murder? Also, i didn't realize until later that Jordan and Erin were adults. That may be just my presumption tripping me up, thoughWhile searching they realize that both crimes are connected. what other crime? The missing dog? How is that a crime? Wait, i think you're referring to the homeless people bit, but how did they unwittingly become involved in that crime? Unless you're referring to stumbling across the skeleton, but i don't really understand how they can make that connection between the two, since they wouldn't be able to tell if the skeleton had it's organs robbed

From the little evidence they've gathered they manage to narrow down their list of suspects. Fearing that Jordan and Erin are getting too close to learning the truth he and his accomplices send someone to attack one of the sisters hoping to slow them down. I'm not keen on this POV shift. I would stick with Jordan's POV in the queryInstead it fuels the sisters’ anger and strengthens their resolve to get the evidence needed by the authorities to send them all to prison.

Lives hang in the balance and fear has a hold of the people of Los Angeles in GONE a 83,400 word suspense novel about former New York detective Jordan St. James who now calls Crescent Valley, California. Now that she is unemployed she uses her investigative skills to help people with the occasional assist from her sister Erin. you need to show us this in the query, not tell us

This is a story of committing crime in the name of love those eighteen years old and over which takes place over a few weeks and is told from the third person perspective in present day California. more telling. Just cut this out

I would like to thank you for taking the time to review my query. If you are interested in reading my book I can email it to you within a matter of minutes. I have also sent queries to other agents. This is a multiple submission. Thank you for your time and consideration

OK, so a detective and her sister discover remains, connect that body with organ thieves, then are targeted by the killers, yeah?
I think you need to focus more on conflict and choice as opposed to plot.
Like, presumably, Jordan and Erin could drop the case to preserve their own lives, but what is it that makes them not do that?
So something like "Jordan and Erin know if they drop the case, the killers will leave them alone, but they can't forgo the promise they made to cancer-ridden Timmy on his death bed. Now they have a choice, protect themselves at the cost of more homeless deaths, or risk their lives in order to end the spree of killing".

Obviously i just made that up, but hopefully you get the idea.

[WhiteGardenia]

Someone is kidnapping homeless people and stealing their internal organs and Jordan St. James and her sister Erin unwittingly but not unwillingly become involved.

What starts out as a simple case trying to find a little boy’s lost dog leads the sister’s to a more grisly discovery: a human skeleton. Jordan and Erin promise the boy they will do everything they can to find whoever did it. Whoever did what???While searching they realize that both crimes are connected.

From the little evidence they’ve gathered they manage to narrow down their list of suspects. Fearing that Jordan and Erin are getting too close to learning the truth he and his accomplices send someone to attack one of the sisters hoping to slow them down. Instead it fuels the sisters’ anger and strengthens their resolve to get the evidence needed by the authorities to send them all to prison.

Lives hang in the balance and fear has a hold of the people of Los Angeles in GONE a 83,400 word suspense novel about former New York detective Jordan St. James who now calls Crescent Valley, California. Now that she is unemployed she uses her investigative skills to help people with the occasional assist from her sister Erin.

This is a story of committing crime in the name of love those eighteen years old and over which takes place over a few weeks and is told from the third person perspective in present day California.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to review my query. If you are interested in reading my book I can email it to you within a matter of minutes. I have also sent queries to other agents.

I'm just going to be nitpicky here...

You need to use more commas.  Without them, you have run on sentences and it is confusing at times. 

What concerns me about your writing is the assumption that if you do not pay attention to the details in your query, one must assume your ms has the same issues.  I'm sorry if that sounds like I am being a negative-Nancy, but you may need someone to edit your ms.  Assuming you make your query squeeky-clean, your ms will will disappoint if it is not as clean...  do you see what I mean about this? 

Okay, getting back to commas, you use the word 'and' three times in your opening sentence, so please, help us to rest and absorb.  I tend to overdo rather than underdo when it comes to commas. 

"Someone is kidnapping homeless people and stealing their internal organs, and Jordan St. James and her sister, Erin, unwittingly but not unwillingly become involved." 

I tend to agree with Falen regarding your opening.  Yes, it is informative and tells in one sentence what the book is about, but the hook is not strong enough.

Two commas needed here:

"What starts out as a simple case, trying to find a little boy's dog, leads the sisters to a more grisly discovery: a human skeleton." 

By entering the commas in the sentence above, you should be able to take out the part of the sentence inside the two commas and make a complete sentence (i.e., "What starts out as a simple case leads the sisters to a more grisy discovery: a human skeleton.")  I'm not suggesting to delete the middle of the sentence; I am just showing you how the commas work within this particular sentence.  Also, note that the word "sister's" is NOT possessive in this sentence.  It should be "sisters."

Four commas needed in this paragraph:

"From the little evidence they’ve gathered, they manage to narrow down their list of suspects. Fearing that Jordan and Erin are getting too close to learning the truth, he and his accomplices send someone to attack one of the sisters, hoping to slow them down. Instead, it fuels the sisters’ anger and strengthens their resolve to get the evidence needed by the authorities to send them all to prison."

Three commas missing in here:

"Lives hang in the balance and fear has a grips hold of the people of Los Angeles in GONE, a 83,400 word suspense novel about former New York detective Jordan St. James who now calls Crescent Valley, California. This is an incomplete sentence.  "...now calls Crescent Valley, California" -- this implies that California used to be named Crescent Valley.  Do you mean she now calls it her home?  Now that she is unemployed, she uses her investigative skills to help people with the occasional assist aid? support? from her sister, Erin."

I would take this out:

"This is a story of committing crime in the name of love those eighteen years old and over which takes place over a few weeks and is told from the third person perspective in present day California."

And this:

"I would like to thank you for taking the time to review my query. If you are interested in reading my book I can email it to you within a matter of minutes. I have also sent queries to other agents." 

I agree with Falen on this (This is a multiple submission. Thank you for your time and consideration.)  Your paragraph states the obvious; agents know it can be readily emailed to them. 


Good luck, Mercyone.  I hope using the QT Forum helps you to be successful.

[dougie]

I totally screwed up on this-- sorry in advance.  I started looking at your synopsis, thinking that it was your query.  So my suggested "query" changes (shown below) were done off that synopsis.

Mercyone, this query may not quite work because it reads more like a synopsis.  Try concentrating the gist of the plot into a couple of relatively quick paragraphs-- there's no real need to go into depth about plot machinations.  Remember, what agents are looking for in a query is a hook that'll pique their interest enough to shout back at you to send them a full!

So with that in mind, I've tried to consolodate (gosh, I just can't spell sometimes!) into something that might work as a query.  In doing so, I'm making a couple of quick assumptions about St. James and her apparent reluctance to call her ex-lover for help until the very end, so I apologize in advance if this doesn't really work for you.

NYPD detective JORDAN ST. JAMES is so distraught over the romantic break-up with her lover (and detective partner) that she quits the force and moves to Los Angeles.  There, while searching for a friend’s missing [dog breed—i.e., beagle, poodle, etc], she stumbles upon two bodies whose [mention specific organs—i.e., spleens, kidneys, etc] have been recently removed.  Through diligent detective work, she links the bodies (and those of other homeless people who have gone missing) to doctor JONAH FRANKLIN’s [actually, be specific as to the doctor’s specialty—ie, “oncologist Jonah Franklin’s”, or “pediatric surgeon Jonah Franklin’s”] attempt to keep his wife alive by replacing her failing organs.

Franklin gets scared when he realizes that St. James is close to discovering his fiendish plot.  He sends thugs to rough-up St. James’s sister.  St. James fears Franklin will harvest his sister’s body parts.  Then St. James breaks down and does the one thing she does not want to do: calls her ex-lover and former detective partner for help.

GONE, a mystery thriller, is complete at X,000 words.

[Brief paragraph about yourself…]

Thank you for your consideration [There's no need to say the bit about "If you are interested in reading my book..." or that you are also querying other agents]


Good luck on this!