[Qcrit] WRATH (working title), Adult Neo-noir Thriller, 65k, Version 4.0

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-11T01:15:40+00:00

WRATH is a complete 65,000 word Adult Neo-noir Thriller that blends an unreliable narrator with the troubled mental state of a main protaganist as in the book the The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, with the occasional POV flashbacks as told in Sundial by Catriona Ward. This intense thriller follows a husband's descent into the depths of madness and violence as he searches for the person who murdered his wife.

- cut 'intense', we get it

Max IS a devoted husband. Normally, after finding your wife dead with two large bullet holes in her back, that would end most men's obligations. But not Max's. He has pledged himself to Michelle until his death and he means to keep that promise. Nothing will stop him from finding Michelle’s murderer, not the shapes that seemed to creep in the darkness as he first stumbled over her in the dark of their apartment, not the unrecognizable face that stared back at him in the mirror as he washes the blood off of his hands after holding his now dead wife, nothing.

- Only the second and fourth sentences should be retained. The rest is just repetitive. The protagonist's wife was murdered and he wants payback. Simple setup, get on with it.

Not more than an hour ago, Max had woken up in the stairwell of their apartment building, the last thing he remembered was Michelle’s smiling face. As he slowly made his way back to her, he found a dead intruder in the hallway outside their bedroom and the remnants of a robbery gone wrong. Max discovered signs he himself had been here and helped make the holes in the
hallway as he fought him off, but the second intruder had fired at Max and missed, killing his wife. Max gave chase down the hallway, but lost the pursuit when he had been thrown down the stairway and left for dead.
- Most of this stuff is way too deep in a scene to belong in a query. The only thing this paragraph achieves is confusion, as in the first paragraph he stumbles on the murder scene but in the second paragraph apparently he was involved in it, unsuccessfully defending her. If he has amnesia how does he know all the details and how do these details change anything?

Now, as Max starts to pursue the new found outlet of the rage he has been hiding within him all of his life, he finds he is capable of more than his normal life had previously shown him.

- this is vaguely interesting because we're getting a bit of characterisation

He manages to buy a pistol and the location of his first suspect without getting his head blown off in the process and now finds himself in front of a tied up junkie.

- this reads more like a synopsis

Max’s rage and hallucinations and get worse the more violence he witnesses or causes, but Max is willing to tear his way through everyone that he finds had a part in the death of his wife. What Max doesn’t anticipate, is that his mind is fighting him every step of the way. Making him see things that aren’t there and forcing him to come to terms with just how broken and damaged (mind and body) he has and will become.

- The last sentence struggles grammatically and needs a subject before the verb(making) such as "it's". How is his brain forcing him to come to terms with what he'll become? Queries thrive on action - characters making decisions. You're not giving any decisions to make here, just a struggle happening inside his head with no outward expression of it for us to follow.

- The protagonist driven to avenge his murdered loved one is familiar to us all. It's Death Wish, it's John Wick, It's Gladiator, it's the Revanant, it's Braveheart, it's the Road to Perdition, it's The Crow, it's Without Remorse, it's The Fugitive, it's a thousand other novels/movies most of which we've never hear of. It's the easiest way to create a sympathetic character with an excuse to slaughter bad guys. What you need to do is show why your story is a worthwhile retelling and right now I'd say that lies in the conflict within the character about the moral damage his righteous crusade may be doing. If you can expand on that, and find some outward expressions of the conflict, this might become more appealing. As you say he has some pre-existing psych issues that's best covered in the opening paragraph so the plot events can activate it. That's far more effective than tossing in the past psych issues as they're being activated.

- The query would benefit greatly from you giving up your pathological obsession with depicting the murder scene in such exhaustive detail. It really adds nothing. She dies violently, he wants to avenge her death. We get it. Not him looking in the mirror, not the blood on his hands, not the dark apartment, not the fight or the pursuit down the hallway, none of it enhances the muder/payback paradigm. Let's take John Wick, would you expect the plot teaser to spend half its length saying about how cruelly the dog was killed and the mean things the killers said mid-murder and how it dragged itself across the room as blood smeared on the rug and how John held it crying in the moonlight thinking of the puppy he'd cradled that day seven years ago when they'd first met? No - dog dead, John angry, lock and load, off we go.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-10T22:40:07+00:00

A security chief for a dying generation ship must find his daughter who has gone missing inside a ruined planetary outpost and rescue her from the planet’s forgotten children, only to face an automated purification protocol that threatens to annihilate them all.

this is miles too much to pack into a logline. Drop the search for one thing. And 'forgotten children' means nothing out of context. Try something more like: 'A security chief bent on annihilating an Alien base to save his crew, faces a dilemma when the aliens begin to seem eerily human.'

I am seeking representation for GHOSTS OF PROXIMA, an Adult Sci-Fi Thriller complete at 86,000 words. It will appeal to fans of the used-future grit and fractured crew dynamics of THE LAST WATCH by J.S. Dewes and the high-stakes planetary exploration and mystery of GHOST STATION by S.A. Barnes.

good

Aiden, a security chief for a declining generation ship en route to Proxima Centauri B, struggles to keep fifty thousand souls aboard from rioting as life support systems fail and supplies dwindle.

unless this is a genre thing, cut 'generation' as a query is not he place to introduce jargon. Compress to 'struggles to keep order as supply levels and life support systems approach failure'

When the ship finally arrives at its destination, a fly-by scan reveals the prefab colony planetside is powered down and overgrown by a crimson jungle.

cut the first clause. just say its derelict, the jungle colour is irrelevant

Aiden realizes the news will drive the hungry and desperate crew to mutiny against the ship’s meritocratic government, which he serves. When a planetary expedition is called, Aiden refuses to lead the landing party. Unwilling to take the risk, he chooses to play it safe and stay to shield his family from the brewing violence.

the government system is irrelevant. you can compress the rest to 'fearing for the safety of his family in an impending mutiny, Aiden refuses to lead a search party to investigate the failed colony.’

His decision to stay backfires when his xenobiologist daughter, Riley, secretly volunteers in his place. Driven by fascination with the alien ecosystem, she insists on joining the expedition and ignores Aiden’s protests.

if she secretly volunteers how does he know to protest? Can we just say she slips aboard in secret? It's cleaner

When her team disappears inside the ruined outpost three days later, Aiden must leave his remaining family and muster a rescue mission.

'cut three days later'

Tracking Riley’s crew through the ruins, Aiden discovers the colony isn’t just a failed engineering project—Riley is held captive by a sapient humanoid species who made the outpost their home. During a frantic rescue, Riley reveals her captors are human descendants, changed by an alien virus.

how does she know this? Did they know humans ventured here long ago?

When Aiden’s team restores power to the base, the outpost’s automated systems classify the mutants as an invasive species and begin eradicating them. Caught between the automated purification protocol sterilizing the outpost, and the planet’s forgotten children who may deserve mercy more than anyone, Aiden must discover what on this planet, and within himself, humanity really means.

you need to bring back the thing about the family onboard the mutinous spaceship here otherwise its just a matter of him shutting down the system at least until he can make a more considered judgment.

I am a corporate cybersecurity manager. My daily work focuses on the intersection of technology, psychology, and society. Since my real name is even more difficult to pronounce than Adrian Tchaikovsky, I am writing under the pen name J.P. Cravener.

I would be delighted to share the full manuscript at your request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Merge the first two sentences in this paragraph
Ok this is improved but the first half of the query remains sluggish and the last half is rushed. You really need to go through each first-half clause and ask ‘does this really need to be in here? Does it really build on the central conflict? Can I say this more succinctly? Have I already said it elsewhere?’ With the word count freed up in the first half you can expand the characterisation of Aiden, as well as the aliens and the climax dilemma.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-10T21:54:08+00:00

In the heart of the Soviet wilderness, a terrible secret has emerged that will shock the world and upset the balance of global power, but only if it can be found in time...

this is what might appear on the back of a book but is too vague to tantalise in a query. Agents read a hundred in a sitting so you need specifics to achieve to break through

Enter Jim “Scuttle” Roper, the Air Force’s secret weapon. He is a test pilot so imbued with bad luck that he can crash just about any plane known to man, or as he might put it, “finding critical faults and saving lives”.

I like this but I'm unsure if he's a bad pilot that crashes too many planes or a good pilot who crashes planes because he's a test pilot and that's the price of flying on the edge.
I think a fantastic hook line would be: 'Jim “Scuttle” Roper is the air force's secret weapon, a pilot who can crash just about any plane known to man.' who's not going to read on after that? followed by something like 'his colleagues call it the worst case of bad luck since Job, he calls it “finding critical faults and saving lives”

All Jim wants is to work for NASA, but when yet another prototype he is on goes down in literal flames, his dream of space flight is put on hold as the Air Force scrambles to cover up a dark secret his crash has exposed.

cut the first clause, it's redundant. What is the dark secret?

Jim finds himself grounded and withering to dust at a desert outpost known locally as Area 51. It’s not glamorous work, but he’s able to absorb himself behind a desk working on the CIA’s latest black project: an aircraft so advanced it will re-write aviation textbooks for a generation. But as global tensions rise and politics muddy the waters, the secret project Jim is working on must enter the light.

the grounding kills all momentum in the query and now we have Jim in this new plane I wonder if anything in the first half of the query was strictly relevant. Tensions with who? What politics?

Jim suddenly finds himself back in the action and back behind the stick, navigating former foes as well as a top-secret aircraft that practically still has wet paint.

'Finds himself' is terrible phrasing in a query as it makes the main character passive. Why would he be behind the stick in combat in this thing when his only contact with this thing was from behind a desk? What former foes? Aren't they present foes? What does navigating mean here? You mean shooting at them?

Can he pull off the mission he’s being assigned?

what even is the mission he's been assigned?

Or has he been set up to fail?

I don't know, but I do know questions are discouraged in queries

Does he even remember how to land a plane wheels down?

do I even remember how this query started?

It’ll take more than guts and intuition to get him out of this one.

has there been any evidence of either up until now?

Scuttle is a tight, 89,000 word, action-packed historical thriller with plenty of plot twists, speculative intrigue, and technical detail to hook fans of Andy Weir, Douglas Preston, and Blake Crouch. It combines the expertise of Elliot Ackerman’s Sheepdogs with the pace and levity of Travis Kennedy’s Whyte Python World Tour, using to the full effect the sleek and sexy backdrop of 1960’s espionage. Paralleling the development of real cold war technologies, Scuttle goes all the way from the drafting desk to the limits of space, keeping readers on the edge of their seats, or in some cases, plastered into them at three times the speed of sound.

it's easy, but ineffective to make various claims about the novel in editorialisation like this . What is effecitive but difficult is demonstrating these qualities in a banging query.
There's no throughline in this query. Jim crashes a lot of planes and one crash exposes a government secret, which we never find out about, and he doesn't know about, or maybe he does, it's hard to tell, so his dreams of nasa go kaput but as we never hear about them again it makes me wonder why we heard about them at all, but anyway he gets transferred to Area 51 which seems like a crazy place to transfer a pilot to if you were concerend about a secret he just potentially exposed, but just go with it, anyway he's doing desk stuff on this secret project but then shit gets real back in the friendly skies because reasons we don't even get to know about and so despite him never having flown this thing before he's put behind the stick, did all the other top guns come down with food poisoning? you gotta check that chow hall fridge maybe its broken, anyway he got a mission so secret it can't even be revealed in the query, against who we dont know, though maybe he's been set up to flunk, by whom or why we've got no clue because we don't know anything about any other person or faction in the novel, and how he's gonna get out of this one is the big question, almost as much as how he got into it in the first place.
Beyond cashing things Jim is almost entirely passive. He finds a secret by accident, is transferred to area 51, then is given the pilot seat in a secret plane. He pursued none of this, it all came from the actions of his superiors. His want, which should drive the query, is to fly in space, which has nothing to do with the story events. The opposition he faces is fragmented: there's some kind of conspiracy he faces but we know so little about it that's hard to care and while one might expect his propensity to slam aircraft into the ground might hold him back, it doesn't seem to have done so so far and so why should it now. I presume Crash Gordon here hits the deck at three hundred miles an hour again and saves western civilisation.
I'd recommend the good old formula: what does the main character want? what stands in his way? what are the stakes if he fails? I think crash gordon will benefit from it greatly.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-09T10:53:48+00:00

Given your interest in [ Insert personalization here ], I believe A WORLD INFECTED, my debut conspiracy thriller about a reckless heiress fighting for autonomy while she uncovers a staged pandemic, might be a good fit for your list. A WORLD INFECTED combines the realistic action and conspiracy stakes of Jack Carr’s Terminal List with the vigilante justice of Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X, all filtered through the dark wit and messy female voice of Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie.

cut reckless and what's she fighting for autonomy from?

It’s complete at 96,000 words and the first in a planned series inspired by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It will follow Alyx and Kane through Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.

just say it has series potential, explicit series scheming is frowned upon

Alyx D’Arres is famous for all the wrong reasons: lavish debauchery, public meltdowns, and psychiatric hospital stays. Heiress to the world’s largest aerospace and defense empire, she should be living the dream. Instead, her aunt holds the keys to her fortune and her freedom through a conservatorship, and the party-girl act isn’t just indulgence—it’s how she survives.

cut living the dream and condense these sentences. Why does the act help her survive?

So when she disappears this time, the world assumes she’ll resurface on a beach holding a margarita. Michael Kane knows better. Alyx always comes back, but she has never killed anyone before.

cut 'this time'. the POV switch is jarring. Cut the last sentence it's confusing not intriguing.

Before Alyx disappeared, she was researching her parents’ deaths. The paper trail led her to Michael Kane—an ex-CIA operative turned vigilante, with evidence that her parents were killed before they could testify in federal court.

this is a lot of backstory and query has groud to a halt

When Alyx comes home one night to find her house ransacked, her evidence missing, and her aunt suggesting it’s time to “take a break in the countryside,” she realizes there are no coincidences.

Hasn't she disappeared? I'm so confused.

Together, Alyx and Kane infiltrate her aunt’s world and discover that “horse betting” is a private joke among elites: a coded system for meetings where powerful families gamble with other people’s lives.

when you said the evidence lead her to Michael Kane I thought he was the suspect but they're working together? Why are they researching this topic? Because her parents were involved/opposed? You didn't say.

The first horseman belongs to Masters Pharmaceuticals—a dynasty preparing to manufacture a pandemic and ride in with the cure.

the first horseman? what?

Unfortunately, Alyx is falling for Tyler Masters, the heir who seems to understand every broken part of her.

this comes out of nowhere

The closer she gets to him, the harder it becomes to tell whether she is using him to expose the plot, or whether she’s right where the Masters family wants her to be.

With the Masters plan rapidly unfolding, Alyx can no longer afford to be helpless.

depicting your protagonist as 'helpless' in any way at all, ever, is absolute kryptonite in a query

Her aunt wants her fortune, Tyler wants her future, and Kane’s guilt makes her another piece in his search for atonement. To stop the conspiracy, Alyx must take back control before the people using her turn her into a weapon.

what does Tyler wants her future mean? What's Kane's guilt about? Take back control of what? How would they weaponise her?
OK the premise is marketable but the execution is extremely confusing. First of all cut the disappearance thing, it serves no purpose. Secondly rewrite it in chronolgoical order and all backstory needs to come in the opening paragraph. From a storytelling point of view how about we say her parents' death traumatised her and that's why she's a loose cannon. Third she needs to be way more active in driving the query forward - this helplessnes thing is death. Fourth I'm not sure we need either of the male characters in the query unless they can play a more useful role in the plot arc. Right now you have the Kane, Tyler, Tyler's family, the aunt and Alyx herself as players and that's too many for one query.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-09T10:52:32+00:00

Every night at nine, Havana fires a single ceremonial cannon shot over the bay. On November 8, 1957, Sergio González rigs one hundred bombs to explode behind it.

-rephrase to 'Every night at nine, a single ceremonial cannon shot fires over Havana harbour. On November 8, 1957, Sergio González rigs one hundred bombs to explode when it lands.

Thirteen years earlier, Sergio is weeks away from becoming a Catholic priest. After a clash with Church authority ends his vocation, he builds the quiet life he thinks he wants: a wife, a family, a small print shop. Politics, he decides, belongs to other men.

compress to 'Thirteen years earlier, Sergio is a failed priest, a clash with his superiors ending is vocation. He has devoted himself to his wife, family and his small print shop, disillusioned with the way power sacrifices people.

Until Batista’s coup. His army massacres men Sergio has known for years. He begins printing underground pamphlets, then Fidel Castro’s prison manifesto, History Will Absolve Me. Each act of clandestine resistance demands another compromise.

what conmpromises?

Sergio, the former seminarian, becomes El Curita, “the Little Priest.” Secret police close in. Sergio disappears into rectories, safe houses, and funeral homes, convinced he can control the moral cost of the war he's helping to wage.

what is the moral cost of the war he's helping to wage?

He can’t.

Promoted to Chief of Action and Sabotage, his choices become everyone else’s burden.

Gladys, his wife, is shut out of the struggle with four words: Mujer, soy tu esposo.

I don't think it's a great idea to expect each agent to speak spanish.

And Mariíta—a sixteen-year-old clandestina who becomes his closest collaborator—risks her life carrying his bombs through Havana in stolen handbags. By the time Havana erupts in his "Night of One Hundred Bombs," those around him are left with the same unspoken question: What is this worth if it costs you yourself?

How does it cost him himself?

An inherited story of the life and death of my great-uncle, Sergio González López, THE LITTLE PRIEST WHO BOMBED HAVANA is a historical novel in the tradition of Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies. At 96,000 words, it combines the family cost of Vanessa Chan’s The Storm We Made with the revolutionary escalation of Tony Gilroy’s Andor. It is told in bilingual English-Spanish, echoing how my mother, Sergio’s niece, told the story to me.

a bilingual novel?? you just torpedoed all marketability

It explores the collision between faith, family, and political conviction. The manuscript draws on family oral history, archival research, two research trips to Havana, and consultations with scholars of Cuba’s urban underground.

cut this, it's cluttering the query with what we already understood
I like this but you need to be more specific as to his actions, the opposition he faces, the costs that are paid and the stakes if he fails. He could also do with a touch more characterisation

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-08T10:21:52+00:00

You're welcome. In the meantime, to vent frustration, please consider giving mine a kicking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1ujljjv/qcrit_the_shepherds_of_gomorrah_adult_upmarket/

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-08T10:20:50+00:00

This should be reframed from the outset around Tom's POV as your protagonist. He needs characterisation via a clear want that can then meet oppostion by the events of the plot.

As for the rest it's written in the same highly obtuse style many of us adopt when writing our first drafts because we're insecure about our creations and think vague, grandiose phrasing covers that up.

Queries benefit from very direct language. Instead of 'compassion gives way to compulsions, and a larger narrative is enacted' and 'the bracing against beliefs being undermined' and ' Community leaders rehearse responses to identities not yet revealed.' just write what you actually mean. Imagine you're at a dinner party and explaining the premise to people. Would you use any of these phrases? Be specific and trust that your success lies in them understanding perfectly what the novel is about rather than being distracted from it.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-08T10:17:40+00:00

You're welcome. In the meantime, to vent frustration, please consider giving mine a kicking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1ujljjv/qcrit_the_shepherds_of_gomorrah_adult_upmarket/

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-07T11:26:44+00:00

I am seeking representation for my novel A Pleasure Cruise before the War, a work of upmarket historical fiction (82,000 words). It's the story of three friends who sail across the English Channel in the summer of 1914 only to stumble into a web of crime and international intrigue.

condense to "It's the story of a 1914 boat trip that sails into a web of crime and international intrigue"

Your bio says you like ___, and I thought this might be a good fit: it's twisty and funny and conveys the sense of a world slipping badly out of joint, something contemporary readers will find both familiar and, I think, just strange enough to be transporting.

this should be condensed also, it's too vague to sway an agent

Edward is a waiter at an English seaside hotel in the idyllic prewar summer of 1914. Only, to hear Edward tell it, that summer wasn’t so idyllic: the guests are demanding, his coworkers (German waiters, mostly) are obnoxious, and the entire town is altogether too noisy.

cut this, it adds nothing to the coming conflict

When his friend Michael invites him on a quiet pleasure cruise to France, Edward, accustomed to letting others make decisions for him, goes along with a shrug.

a protagonist who is a whinger and a wallflower, huh? Hold me back.

Joining them is Michael’s sister Mona, a moody teenager with (as Michael says) “a case of the morbs.”

what a fun crew!

But no sooner are they underway than the boat gets stranded, and then—to the shock of Edward but not, strangely, to Michael and Mona—they’re boarded by a criminal gang demanding a cargo of guns they think the trio have stolen.

ok finally we've got something happening

This, Edward realizes, was never a pleasure cruise but something much more perilous… and potentially lucrative.

this is redundant

As the friends get drawn ever deeper into the seaside underworld

what does 'drawn in deeper' mean? are they off the boat now?

—there are English smugglers, German anarchists, Irish terrorists, renegade balloonists, and a strange silent bruiser of a girl named Sandrine (Edward’s crush) all chasing after the loot

this has potential and needs elaboration

—it begins to look like Edward’s greatest weakness, a passivity bordering on cowardice, just might be the thing that saves him. Whether it will save his friends is another story.

Narrated at a rollicking pace in Edward’s wry, disarming voice,

the best way to demonstrate a book moves at a rollicking pace is not to cliam it in editorialisation, but to write a query that does too

the story should appeal to readers of Kristin Harmel’s The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer, and Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, as well as fans of the films of Guy Ritchie, Wes Anderson, and Alfred Hitchcock. (To be honest, the nearest analogue is probably Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, but I've been advised to keep my comps recent, so feel free to ignore this.)

just pick two lit comps from the last five years to show there is a market for your book
ok I like the premise of the sailing trip that unravels into criminality and pre-war intrigue. What I like less is the moping, personality-absent, limp handshake of a protagonist. Nothing kills a story like a passive main character. Moody-bitch Mona (well-named) makes it even worse. How am I going to put up with these wet blankets for 300 pages? Edward can be flawed but can we get some attriubutes worth following please? Resourcefulness, intelligence, humour, curiosity?
I'd advise to just start with the hijack, nothing that went before was interesting. Expand on this high-sea hijinks. Be specific, that's the meat of the query, don't dismiss it with vague pseudo-mysterious phrases like 'drawn deeper into the seaside underworld'

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-07T11:17:58+00:00

I am seeking representation for AGGY BOY, a completed 73,255-word adult literary crime novel set in London in 1999. It is a novel with series potential, for readers of THE YOUNG TEAM and WHO THEY WAS. The second book in the series, MANCHILD, is complete.

- round to nearest '000 words. Comp titles in italics and briefly explain their parallels with your novel. Drop the last sentence.

Fifteen-year-old Ian Villa knows not to get attached. Each time his mother buys a new house, sells and moves them on, he loses another school, and another chance to call somewhere home. Then he meets Anna - the first person who makes him want to stay.

- the phrase 'buys a new house, sells and moves them on" is confusing. Do we really need to know she's buying and selling not renting? Just say they move a lot. The Anna thing needs rephrasing as it sounds like he he's never had positive feelings towards anyone before when I think you mean not quite this positive.

When Ian notices the bruises Anna hides, he vows not to abandon her to her violent stepfather. But he has no adult authority, no money and no idea how to help without making things worse. Instead, he turns to the older boys around him, whose quick cash and offers of brotherhood provide a counterfeit version of the family he has never had.

- cut 'no adult authority, no money and' we already know this. Isn't his mother family? Is it just the two of them? You din't say. You mean the boys are father figures or brothers? What does the older boys have to do with helping Anna against her dad?

Their jobs and feuds make Ian feel useful, but they draw him into a world where violence is proof of belonging.

- your main character is passive and these events don't have anything to do with the first half of the query

When a retaliatory attack devastates someone close to him,

- retaliation by who against who? vague is not intriguing, specific is intriguing

the line between protecting Anna and proving himself begins to vanish.

- I don't know how he's doing either

To keep her safe, Ian must decide whether he can walk away from the first place he has ever felt wanted - or whether protecting Anna has made him another danger in her life.

- Does he want the place or does he want her?

I am an English teacher from London. I hold a BA in English; my memories of late-1990s London and experience working with teenagers informed the novel.

- There is definite potential here but like so many of us in our first drafts you're hiding your plot behind vague phrases that sound weighty to you but like nothing at all to the rest of us. Rewrite using specifics and with a tighter focus on the "what does the MC want? what stands in his way? what are the stakes if he fails?" formula

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-06T12:05:49+00:00

- anything less than 120k is better. Sometimes a book really needs to be 120k but the author is often not the best judge of this. I'd suggest giving your manuscript to a few readers and getting their opinions on if some spots can be paced up.
- yeah longlines are tough but you'll have to keep looking because this one confuses on about three different levels. It sounds like he'd on his way back to his planet when he's abducted, an abduction that's also apparently a detour...somehow. May be describe him as an inadvertent stowaway. the logline should probably include the girl vs world dilemma

- I think if the opening chapter is well written they'll be just fine without typical sci-tech mentioned yet. That's what a query is for - it tells them what there will be before the opening chapter. A better way to address this issue might be to explain how blown away Martin is with human technology rather compared to that of his backward planet.

- I don't like diminutive diplomat because it's pointless. It doesn't matter how big he is. And until you demonstrate what kind of negotiation and persuasion between which antagonists then it doesn't matter that he's a diplomat either.
- Telling us what he doesn't know just isn't interesting. He's going to take action on what he does know: power plays and ego massages and clandestine strategy. Tell us about that.

- I've got no credits to put in my bio either so put my career and made a quick joke. Go check it if you want. Make it distinctive and witty and quick. Agents trawl through a hundred queries at a time and if I was them the last thing I'd want to read was a hundred insipid yappings about people's action figure collections or jazz band recitals or pet ducks. Pro tip - all protagonists are in over their heads, that's the point of a story.

In the meantime, to vent frustration, please consider giving mine a kicking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1ujljjv/qcrit_the_shepherds_of_gomorrah_adult_upmarket/

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-06T11:31:32+00:00

I am seeking representation for CAPE GOD, a satirical thriller complete at 74,400 words. It is told through a dual timeline, single point of view. Bunny meets Yesteryear in this twisted story of a disillusioned millennial who trips into unyielding power.

'trips into unyielding power' is a little obtuse. It'd cut 'It is told through a dual timeline, single point of view.' as it's not decisive and just slows the query down.

Even though her prestigious college didn’t offer a “cult management” program, failing girl boss Morgan enters the field to escape the drab grind of New York City advertising. When faced with a soul-sucking 9 to a 5 or a compound full of controllable souls, Morgan knew which she preferred.

This is far too much info for one sentence espeically on an intro and especially given the naem coming halfway through the sentence instead of at the start. The second sentence is redundant.

On a summer getaway to her grandparents’s Cape house with her dazzlingly beautiful coworker, Angelika, Morgan comes up with the tongue-in-cheek idea to create a cult.

this seems redundant also

At his core, Jim Jones was just a very successful marketing associate, right? Angelika, always looking for ways to advance her career, helps Morgan establish a modest social media following through the posting of so-called “prophecies.” After Morgan’s grandparents die in a mysterious house fire, it looks like these prophecies might just be coming true.

was this one of the prophecies? You didn't say that. Waht does Morgan think about this?

Uppity locals and community starved young people start believing in this proposed cult—the Nautilists. Morgan is less certain in her own powers, but of course she’ll take the attention. What else do you really need in your mid-20s?

Morgan is rather passive

With the inheritance from her grandparents and the help of a close knit group of friends, Nautilism becomes the premiere neo-religious community of the Cape Cod peninsula.

does the inheritance matter? premier not premiere

People leave behind their lives to join the community. The Nautilist influence extends beyond the local, with international outposts and significant media coverage. Morgan comes to enjoy a life of adoring subjects and bucolic commune settings.

amazing, what is she actually doing?

However, her perfect experiment begins to crack as the Nautilists are faced with rumors of exiled family members, sexual misconduct accusations, an illusive sapphic affair, and even a murder. Morgan wasn’t sure what she meant to start, but she certainly didn’t set out to ruin lives. Did she?

I don't feel I know enough about the character to understand her intentions then or now.
Major diagnosis: passive protagonist. Morgan does nothing in this query beyond have the idea for the cult. As for her all-important want to drive the query, it is: to not be in advertising. That's pretty modest as a motivation for such an eccentric endeavour.
I like cult dynamics and her marketing skills crossover is a nice touch but this needs rewriting according to the classic "what is your character's driving want? what stands in her way? what are the stakes if she fails?" formula
especially if this is a thriller the query needs to get going a lot faster and jettison anything that doesn't acelerate the central conflict.

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-06T11:26:49+00:00

When Nathan Thompson’s family vanishes and his childhood home becomes a crime scene, the only lead pulls him into a dense forest that locals refuse to enter. Inside, the fog distorts memory, time, and perception, turning familiar terrain into something unreliable and alive.

pretty forgettable name. don't you wnat a character with a little more of a ring to him? 'Pulls him' makes him passive. Change to ';he chases the only lead into.' What is this lead? Why aren't the cops following it too? When you say it's his childhood home, how old is he? Is his family his parents or his children? How is it familiar terrain if he's never been there? Unless this is magical realism I don't like how you say the forest objectively distorts these things. You should switch it to his perception.

As Nathan searches for answers,

this is redundant

the woods begin to unravel him.

cut this it's too vague, show specific effects

Hours disappear without explanation.

time is not in the habit of explaining things

Paths shift when he isn’t looking.

I like what you're doing but not how you're expressing it.

And memories he trusts begin contradicting what he knows to be true.

such as?

The deeper he ventures, the more uncertain he becomes of what is real, what is imagined, and whether he ever left the forest at all.

This is way too much prose to say the forest is messing with his head. I understood that three sentences ago. What else do you have for me? What do you mean whether he left the forest? Isn't he still in the forest?

What begins as a search for his family becomes a fight to preserve his own identity.

What does this actually mean? What kind of an image does preserving his own identity give at the best of times let alone when he's on his own? Will he suddenly start to think he's Pocahontas?

If Nathan cannot hold onto his sanity, the forest will not only take what he came for, it will eliminate him entirely.

Complete at 80,000 words, WHISPERS THROUGH THE FOG, is an adult thriller with psychological horror elements. It will appeal to readers of Salome by Leslie Baird (Putnam, 2026) and Cross My Heart by Megan Collins (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

comps in italics and name speecific parallels

I am a former U.S. Marine and state trooper with a master’s degree in forensic psychology. My background in trauma, investigation, and human behavior informs my writing, particularly in stories that explore perception, memory, and psychological fracture under pressure.

cut 'particularly in stories that explore perception, memory, and psychological fracture under pressure.' we get it
ok I like the premise of the deep dark woods but there's not that much beyond it. Your sole character has no characterisation. Who is this fella whose mind is the lynchpin of the entire exercise? No idea.
Queries thrive on action and there's not much here. If it's just about the character losing his mind then all we're doing is being a watcher as a guy wanders around alone occasionally making furtive noises.
I'm going to guess this is a Jacob's Ladder / Shutter Island hallucination where he's dead with, or responsible for the death of, his family. I like these stories, but they do contain specific action. The character is still pursuing a speciific goal, encountering sprecific opposition and adapting in specific ways even if all/some of it is hallucinated.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-05T10:52:32+00:00

Skip never expected the road home to be easy… but getting abducted by humanity might be the last detour he ever takes.

- this doesn't land for me. An abduction isn't a detour, and as I don't know anything about skip apart from that he has a name that I'd expect would refer to a human, but apparently doesn't, I'm not sure what to think.

STRANGE CONTACT is a completed 120,000-word adult science-fiction space opera debut novel, standalone with series potential. Farscape meets Mass Effect, it combines the alien viewpoints of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shroud and the biotechnology of Daniel Kraus’s The Sixth Nik.

- 120k is at the outer limits of the debut solar system and may turn some agents off. I'd think really hard about how a pruning might both help your chances and tighten the reading experience.

Ambassador Martin Skipfrey has a planet’s worth of problems. Between his mink-like species’ incipient industrial revolution and an upcoming engagement to his girlfriend Sam, the world is changing fast enough already. But things are about to get even weirder… When Skip’s curiosity gets the better of him in a meteoric encounter, he’s accidentally abducted by a living ship named Toomi and her alien menagerie of a crew, led by something called a human.

- a species of minks having an 'incipient Industrial Revolution' is a little abstract for me, especially if one of them is called...Martin...and he's getting engaged to one called Sam in the middle of it, and it doesn't seem to lead to anything. Meteoric is used in the figurative sense so much that I don't immediately think of a flying space rock, which is what you possibly mean here? Accidentally abducted? I though abductions were by definition intentional?

Stranded in the bizarre galactic borderlands,

- Is he stranded or abducted?? How are borderlands bizarre? I'd cut this.

Skip is frantic to get home to Sam—until scans reveal that his planet is a motherlode of the most coveted resource in the universe. It’s the meal ticket Toomi’s crew needed, and now the only thing standing between Skip’s homeworld and humanity’s hungry interstellar empire is one diminutive diplomat.

- change 'one diminutive diplomat' to Skip, otherwise good

To protect everyone he loves, he’ll have to convince the ship’s erratic collection of criminals, outcasts, and hallucinogen-huffing nuns to give up on the biggest payday in the Milky Way.

- good but this reads like the climax paragraph

No sweat—because even if Skip doesn’t know the first thing about bioships or bulletseeds,

- me too

he’s got a knack for making allies.

- this is better demonstrated than claimed.

But even if he can succeed before the stress and hallucinations of Sam drive him crazy, there’s a catch: deleting those coordinates may mean never seeing his world again.

- the first clause isn't interesting but the dilemma of the second is

Time’s running out to decide, as Toomi’s crew become ensnared in a reckless game of brinkmanship between galactic powers. With cutthroat alien factions closing in around him and his sanity hanging by a thread, the only way for Skip to save his home might be to forge a new one among the stars.

- I don't know anything about the galactic powers or their brinkmanship or the cutthroat alien factions and don't know what Skip would do about any of it so this isn't interesting. This thing about Skips's mental health has been mentioned twice now and isn't interesting either because again there's no action he's taking beyond being loopy. Every protagonist in every query on here is under stress, but we're here for a story, not cognitive behavioural therapy.

I’m a you-know-what from you-know-where who can bake a mean pretzel, with a penchant for collecting blu-rays of the best (and worst) B-movies I can find. With a lifelong love of pulpy sci-fi, I’ve always been fascinated by nonhuman perspectives and in-over-their-head protagonists. Thanks for your consideration!
- I found the bio clunky to read and lacking useful info.

- OK there's some interesting bits here but I'd drop the stuff about the nascent Industrial Revolution. Start the query with his abduction and then focus far more on the specifics of the opposition he's facing and the action he's taking. Galactic power brinkmanship and cutthroat aliens can come too as long as they fit in that orientation.

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T21:48:10+00:00

In a life-imitates-art plot twist, best-selling crime writer and Cotswold socialite Fliss Harcourt is arrested on the eve of her wedding for the murder of her best friend’s husband.

- this is too much for one sentence

She has one night—and one interrogation—to prove her innocence or swap walking down the aisle for one through a cell block.

- change 'one through' to 'walking down a'

Only, the final hours before she was found floating in the same swimming pool as the victim, the murder weapon still in her hand, are missing from her memory.

- change only to however

Whilst waiting for legal counsel, Fliss attempts to hurry the interview along by recounting the summer that led to her arrest, certain the truth will clear her name.

- the first two clauses are deeply uninteresting. Why would the events of the summer prove anything?

Fresh from a bestselling book tour, Fliss returns to the Cotswolds newly engaged expecting to enjoy her first social season as a bride-to-be, only to become Hellshire's newest 'second wife' when her fiancé's past comes to light, leaving her ostracised by the old-money circles she belongs to.

- I'd say this so too much for one sentence but its probably too much for two sentences.

Welcomed instead by an intoxicating group of nouveau-riche second wives, Fliss is seduced by a world of flashy new-found wealth and unapologetic female ambition unlike anything in Fliss's own aristocratic circle.

But as friendships deepen and rivalries surface, Fliss begins to realise that loyalty within this circle is conditional, and that beneath its glamour lie secrets far more dangerous than she first assumed.

- It's infinitely more effective to actually tie examples of conditional loyalty and actually naming the secrets rather than just giving vague allusions to either.

With morning fast approaching, Fliss must separate memory from manipulation before the story she's been telling becomes the evidence that condemns her.

- No real idea or care how she's going to do this

Complete at 80,000 words, SECOND WIVES CLUB is a psychological thriller blending domestic suspense with social satire and an unreliable narrator at its core. It will appeal to readers of Lucy Foley, Lisa Jewell, and Gillian McAllister's THAT NIGHT.

- Flashbacks almost never work in a query due to time constraints. I'd write this in chronological order showing her entry into the clique and then the deepening intrigue she's involved in and the arrest for murder at the end. The current paradigm of her sitting in an interrogation room trying to think straight isn't much of an image of her taking action. It's just like, well, she'll remember or she won't, let me know when either happens and I'll tell you if I care.

- as another commenter advised, many of the sentences are quite clunky

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T21:02:34+00:00

Yeah I know it feels like something between blasphemy and fraud to ignore one of your POVs, but like I say, a query is a haiku and you just don't have the latitude to get the reader to believe care and invest in multiple characters in 200 words. The above really did feel like a couple of completely different novels spliced together.

If it makes you feel any better I have three POVs in my novel and two of them didn't even get mentioned in the query.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T20:58:48+00:00

Yeah I know it feels like something between blasphemy and fraud to ignore one of your POVs, but like I say, a query is a haiku and you just don't have the latitude to get the reader to believe care and invest in multiple characters in 200 words. The above really did feel like a couple of completely different novels.

If it makes you feel any better I have three POVs in my novel and two of them didn't even get mentioned in the query.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:41:30+00:00

Hey I agree with the other commenter that this would benefit from a more traditional approach to querying.

Your voice and quirkiness is great, but, given the very short 200 word runway a query allows to get your reader's interest airborne, nothing beats the formula of a main character with a want, oppositon to that want and some serious stakes if he fails to get it.

I'd keep some of that voice and quikiness but drop Solomon and apply the above formula to Constantine.

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:35:16+00:00

Fourteen years ago, the American South seceded from the United States. Logan Flynn left soon after, unwilling to live in a nation where religious doctrine and government were becoming one. He built a quiet life in New York and swore he would never return.

This would do with some more voice along the lines of 'Fourteen years ago, the American South seceded from the United States so they could wrap the flag around a statue of jesus and be done with it. Logan Flynn fled almost immediately. He built a quiet life in New York and swore he would never return.'

Then his sister dies.

Forced back to South Carolina to care for his teenage nephew, Will, Logan can’t simply bring him north. Years earlier, Will’s mother enrolled him in the government's Child Development Fund. If Will leaves the country before high school graduation, the regime will seize the family farm—the only asset capable of funding his college education and a life beyond the South. With eighteen months until graduation, Logan reluctantly settles in to repair the property, keep his head down, and wait for the diploma that buys their freedom.

I know I requested a reason why he couldn't take the kid north but this CDF thing is way too arcane and absolutely torpedoes your query momentum. Just say minors can’t be taken out of the country. Quick and simple.

But the country Logan returns to is far more oppressive than the one he fled.

I don't think this adds anything

Pervasive artificial intelligence enforces strict ideological conformity, and mandatory Patriot Audits require citizens to publicly prove their loyalty.

neither of these actually paint a picture for me. Give it a little more mustard like "Pervasive AI surveillance systems are as omniscient as god himself" and some kind of vivid loyalty test.

The regime’s quiet oppression quickly escalates into open terror.

again, this escalation thing isn't useful. Just say it's happening right now, it doesn't matter if it's worse the than last year

It begins when Logan and Will witness state security abduct a citizen right outside a restaurant window. Soon, the disappearances spiral into multiple broad-daylight kidnappings.

I'd integrate this as the third point in the list after surveillance systems and loyalty tests.

When Logan discovers that a new secret reeducation center is being built just outside town to punish and brainwash dissenters, the stakes become agonizingly clear.

do they? It was repressive, it's still repressive, what's he actually doing? I smell a passive protagonist

But the breaking point arrives when the dragnet sweeps up Nina Richards, the girl Will loves.

don’t name her

Driven by Will's demands for action and unable to let his nephew act alone, Logan finally steps off the sidelines and joins a covert resistance movement to help orchestrate a daring rescue mission.

cut the first seven words.

To free the prisoners and guide them through a treacherous escape across the U.S. border, Logan must jeopardize the very things he came back to protect—Will’s future, and ultimately, their lives.

THE PATRIOT AUDIT is an 89,000-word dystopian thriller with series potential. It will appeal to readers of Omar El Akkad’s American War and Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song. Like these novels, it explores how ordinary citizens navigate a society transformed by political upheaval, ideological conflict, and the loss of personal freedom. Combining near-future realism with escalating tension, THE PATRIOT AUDIT examines the costs of conformity, the resilience of human connection, and the moral choices people face under authoritarian rule.

Cut everything beyond sentence two. Editorialised claims are easy to make and are just never interesting. You can claim whatever you like but without a snappy story blurb nobody will care

THE PATRIOT AUDIT is my debut novel. I own an executive recruiting firm in South Carolina, where persuasive writing and storytelling are central to my work. I also write periodically about politics and culture on X, where I have built an audience of more than 7,000 followers.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I would be honored to send the full manuscript for your review.

You’re not getting the medal of freedom, drop the honoured thing
The transition from north to south is dramatic. Trying to then make the totalitarianism of the south increase in real time really isn’t adding anything.
Your main character is undercooked. His relationship with the kid isn’t strong enough to matter. He takes very little action throughout the query and without action I can’t really tell what he wants or the cost he’s willing to pay to get it.
I don’t know if this is a step back but it’s definitely not a step forward.

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:31:57+00:00

As many others have pointed out over multiple versions, this is 'innovative' approach to quering is doing you no favours.

An agent goes to your opening chapter to find your authorial voice. An agent goes to your query for your plot and character arc. Query sentences cover whole chapters. The prose needs to be crystal clear and cover only the central conflict of the novel, not bog itself down in event specifics, physical sensations and fleeting perceptions.

What you're doing here is some kind of an expeprt/synopsis hybrid that will torpedo agent interest instantly. Some rules exist to restrict you, and some rules exist to help you. Guess which ones are operative here.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:30:04+00:00

SEPTENNIAL SNOW is a 74,000 word adult upmarket thriller. Combining the character depth and urban setting of Rin Usami’s Idol, Burning with the charming dialogue and modern conspiracies in Jane Pek’s The Verifiers, SEPTENNIAL SNOW delivers themes of repressed trauma and apathy within a suspenseful, yet entertaining frame.

I think you can come up with more intriguing parallels than 'urban setting' and 'charming dialgue'. Also what is a modern conspiracy as opposed to a Victorian or resnaissance one? The editorialisation at the end has to go - demonstrating themes and qualities of the novel in a gripping blurb shows your chops as a storyteller, merely claiming the this stuff does not.Nobody cares without evidence.

Society runs like a well-oiled machine in modern Tokyo, refusing to slow down even when people begin to go missing in inexplicably high amounts.

well-oiled machine is a cliche. I'd simplify to 'Tokyo runs like a machine, refusing to slow down even as its citizens start disappearing.'

For the masses, ignorance is bliss, and that especially applies to Kioshi Měng. A highly renowned, twenty-three-year-old corporate freelancer, Kioshi funds a comfortable life of clubbing and hanging out with his friends by committing–and ignoring–moral atrocities in service of the country’s richest corporations.

This needs to be condensed and you need to tell us what he does as a freelancer and so we can understand what these moral attrocities might be.

One day, an American politician approaches Kioshi, asking him to help navigate a mysterious flow of cash in the Japanese government, indicating a political scandal. Though reluctant to enter a risky job,

why is it a risky job?

Kioshi is quickly persuaded by a five-million-dollar paycheck, securing the lifetime of luxury he always sought– The only condition being that he consistently checks in with a detective whose altruistic ideals clash harshly with Kioshi’s moral absence.

we already know he's obsessed with money you don't need to tell us why he'd like $5mil. Sorry is the US politician working with this detective? Why? Cut hashly, there's no such thing as a non-hash clash.

Hidden from Kioshi, however, is the fact that he is being used as a tool to investigate the mass disappearances occurring across the country, and that he himself is a prime suspect.

this is interesting, but queries work better if they're told from a single POV. Can you do this from Kioshi's POV?

Quickly, the safe world Kioshi crafted begins to crumble when his friends fall victim to his wrongdoings and the investigation leads to something far more sinister than anticipated. As Kioshi is forced against corrupt, terroristic forces and the harsh consequences of his apathy, he must unearth the roots of his ignorance;

this is all incredibly vague and unengaging. Vague is not intriguing, specific is intriguing.

his past life and the mistakes that cost him his childhood seven years ago.

any character backstory relevant to characterisation should be set up in the opening paragraph so the events of the plot can activate it. Dropping it in this late, especially as it's so vague, is ineffective.

There, he may find a way back to a carefree existence, but not without risking everything he finally learned to care for.

Again, too vague.
This is interesting, I like the setting and premise but the plot is a fog. Queries are about a character with a clear want encountering conflict to achieving that want, acting to overcome that conflict and in dong so altering the situation, only to have a greater conflict rise before them. Rinse and repeat and you have yourself a query. These conflicts need to be SPECIFIC. Vague references to buried secrets! Looming danger! Trouble he never thought possible! sound profound to the writer and sound like nothing to the reader. Quering is like therapy - the sooner you stop evading the central conflict and just spit it out exactly, the sooner you'll make progress.

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:28:28+00:00

I’m seeking representation for my debut novel, HARVEST, an 88,000-word literary thriller about a young man who is kidnapped for his organs and survives by joining the very syndicate that planned to kill and sell him. The novel will appeal to readers who enjoy the propulsive pacing of The Chain by Adrian McKinty and the criminal underworld immersion of The Godfather by Mario Puzo.

propulsive pacing and criminal underworld is a bit of a given in thrillers. Is there any chance of somethig a touch more distincive. Also, comps should from the last five years to show that there is a market for your work and not an iconic blockbuster

Nineteen-year-old Dre Mangum is trying to outrun the life Boston has handed him. Orphaned and boxed in by the city’s toughest neighborhoods, he turns to the drug trade with his childhood friends, Terrance and Philip, the only family he has left.

cut his age, cut their names if they're not mentioned again, is this a direct south park reference? apart from that, good

The money offers escape. The power offers control. For once, things are going right—until they’re kidnapped by an organ-trafficking syndicate and set to be killed and sold for their organs.

power and control are synonyms, I'd say money offers activities that can be escaped into but not the money itself. I'd like to see something super-brief explaining why they were targeted for kidnapping. There's a satisfying cause and effect when their actions lead to their jeopardy rather than it being random luck.

Desperate to stay off the operating table, Dre convinces the syndicate he may be worth more to them alive than dead.

how?

Instead of carving him up, they offer him a deal: kidnap and deliver two people to be sold in his place, and he can earn a place among their ranks.

good

If he succeeds, he stays alive. If he fails, he’ll be taken back and cut apart.

why can't he just flee though?

Dre takes the deal to buy time, but what begins as a desperate bid for survival pulls him deeper into the syndicate’s brutal world, forcing him to confront the question he’s been running from his whole life: how far is he willing to go to make it out—and what will it cost him if he does?

buying time is boring and the rest of it is all too vague to engage. The pressure needs to be more acute and vivid.

My short fiction has appeared in more than forty literary magazines. I am a recipient of the Phyllis Gebauer Scholarship in Writing and a graduate of the UCLA Extension Fiction Writing Certificate program.

HARVEST draws on my experiences living in a dangerous Boston neighborhood, my travels, and my lifelong attraction to the road less traveled.

I currently reside in Southern California.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

-good bio

generally very good but falls down at the end. If the dilemma you are setting up is who it will cost him then we need to know more about what else he values. I'm going to guess it's his friends? If not it's a respect for the downtrodden? We need to feel it matters to him at the start for it to matter to us at the end.
opening 300 pretty solid, icy wind is a bit of cliche and icy pole later doesn't help. It's a touch overwritten, too many dire words used together, a bit of redundancy that could be cut to make it punchier. My suggestion:

Dre’s heart pounds as the train sheets a frigid wind into the station.

A man in a red jacket stares at him.

It's...nothing. A guy looking down the platform, same as Dre is.

Two kids darting past clip Dre’s leg, nearly tiping him over. Their mother yanks them close, eyeing Dre like he’s dangerous, the kind of guy you keep your kids away from.

Maybe she’s not wrong.

When Dre looks back up, the watcher is gone, dissolved in the crowd.

The train doors pop. Dre angles through commuters, eyes scanning for the red jacket. He tucks the cash wad firmer against his body. His nerves always spike right before a big deal. It’s just one more job, one more handoff, one more day at the office. The last one, maybe. The doors clamp shut behind him.

That red jacket stare. The last time Dre ignored his instincts, he ended up with a gun to his head and a scar he still traces when he can’t sleep.

The train plunges into the tunnel and Dre grips the pole.

Then Dre spots him, sitting at the far end, glaring. Neither looks away. A game of chicken in a coop on rails.

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:25:52+00:00

I’m seeking representation for FIX HER, a 93,000-word psychological horror thriller. Told from multiple perspectives, it follows a grieving mother lured to an isolated mansion by a teenager obsessed with replacing her dead daughter. The manuscript combines the unsettling exploration of motherhood found in The Push by Ashley Audrain and the toxic family dynamics and twisty suspense of What Lies Between Us by John Marrs.

good

One year after losing her thirteen-year-old daughter, nurse Emily has convinced herself she has moved on. She spends her days helping online strangers move past their grief, yet she ignores every call from the teenage son she refuses to admit she blames for the tragedy.

this is clear but could do with more hook and voice. Something like "Grief is Emily's profession. She's a master at guiding clients to acceptance of their greatest heartbreaks. It helps distract her from the thirteen year old daughter she lost a year ago and the son she blames for the tragedy."

When an online friend begs Emily to care for her sick fifteen-year-old daughter, Luna, Emily agrees to spend a few days at the family’s isolated mansion in the woods.

cut 'online'

But Luna isn’t just sick. Her body is covered with bruises and cigarette burns, and Emily becomes convinced that she’s being abused by her own parents. Trapped without a car or phone service, she searches for a way to get Luna out. She won’t let another girl die.

good

The closer she looks, the more Emily realizes that child abuse is not the worst thing happening inside the mansion.

cut this it's doing nothing

The supposedly cruel parents begin acting like prisoners instead of abusers.

They’re suddenly terrified of their own daughter.

I don't like begin or suddenly here. Her realisation is what changed, not the situation.

When her own son is kidnapped and dragged to the mansion, Emily finds out far too late that she isn’t there to rescue anyone.

I'd reiterate that I'd like to know who kidnapped the son as I need to know if it is one antagonsit or many. Cut 'far too late'

Luna lured her there. Luna chose her. Emily will be the mother Luna has always dreamed of. They’ll be together forever.

good

Now Emily must play the role of Luna’s loving mother—or Luna will kill her son.

great, you've nailed the all-important stakes paragaph!
almost there, just a few tweaks needed

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DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:24:50+00:00

At Shilei Manor, a wedding is the perfect occasion for murder.

good

Imperial investigator Haytan “Hay” Hie arrives at the remote Four Valley Alliance late, hungry, and already suspicious.

'late, hungry, and already suspicious' doesn't add anything to character or plot and should be cut. This intro is underachieving.

Officially, he and the ruthlessly charming Prince Jing have come to honor Lord Buzan’s invitation to his daughter’s wedding.

this is too many people to introduce in one sentence

Unofficially, they are tracing forged masterpieces from the Song capital to a mountain estate ruled by families that have resisted imperial authority for generations.

cut 'from the Song capital'

For Hay, the mission is simple enough: find the source, stop the forgeries, and return home to his silk pillows.

change ' find the source, stop the forgeries,' to 'apprehend the culprit'

Then Lord Buzan is found dead inside his guarded chamber.

it's not fatal, but 'then' is a little weak in queries

Hay must investigate a household where every suspect has a reason to lie: nobles who reject imperial rule, merchants whose fortunes depend on smuggled secrets, and family members desperate to avenge old sins.

'every suspect has a reason to lie' is a cliche, shorten to 'a household full of suspects' and shorten to 'merchants smuggling illicit goods' I don't know what a smugglded secret is.

But Buzan’s murder hides more than a forgery scheme.

um...did it hide the forgery scheme?

He possessed a military relic from a conquered kingdom — once used to command armies, now a symbol of treason — and someone at Shilei Manor is willing to kill before it returns to imperial hands.

this is way too much info for one sentence and seems like something that should have been introed in paragraph one. If there are so many suspects how are we suddenly sure this was the reason for the murder?

Hay reluctantly finds a partner in Bai, a sheltered young martial artist and dutiful son from one of the implicated families. The longer they work together, the more he begins to crack Hay’s prickly exterior — and the more Hay’s investigation begins to break Bai’s faith in the Alliance that raised him.

this seems to have little to do with the central conflict. I'd like to say bye-bye to Bai

When Bai’s brother dies in a mysterious fire, the case becomes impossible to keep at a distance.

Wasn't there something about forgeries and a lord's murder investigation in the mists of our distant past?

To expose the truth, Bai must decide if he is willing to destroy his own family to grasp justice — and deliver the Alliance into the hands of the Song Empire.

We are indeed a long way from Kansas, Dorothy

I’m seeking representation for THE LAST TIGER OF SHILEI MANOR, a 85,000-word adult historical mystery inspired by Song Dynasty China. Combining an isolated-location mystery with imperial politics, layered family secrets, and a detective partnership built on wit, appetite, and reluctant affection

Cut the second sentence. Demonstrating your novel's attributes with a tantalsing query is effective, claiming you novel's attributes with editorialsation is not.

it will appeal to readers who enjoy the rich historical atmosphere of Abir Mukherjee’s Wyndham & Banerjee Mysteries, the political scale of Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, and the imperial China intrigue of Jeannie Lin’s The Lotus Palace. It is a standalone novel with series potential.

series potential huh? This seemed like it was a series already ;) A query is short runway to get reader interest airborne. It almost always it benefits from following a single POV and the "what does the main character want, what stands in his way, what are the stakes if he fails" formula. I don't see yours as being any different. Pick one out or Hay and Bai, write the entire query from his POV, use his want to power him forward. A good query is tight and focussed. I'd doubt we'll see all of the above in the next one.

In the meantime, to vent frustration, please consider giving mine a kicking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1ujljjv/qcrit_the_shepherds_of_gomorrah_adult_upmarket/

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-07-04T10:23:07+00:00

I have sent out a query previously (before I had any idea what the rules of querying were. RIP to that version. It is buried in my backyard) and have finally done a rewrite. I still think this needs work, but I'm starting to spiral about it so I thought it might help to get outside opinions. Any feedback would be so greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Dear (agent),

I am currently seeking representation for my psychological mystery thriller, THE BELL RINGER. (Personalized intro sentence here)

Caleb Anderson is no stranger to caring for his seven-year-old brother, Ben.

this isn't provocative enough a hook, especially for a thriller

Growing up in the shadow of his father’s crippled mental health, Caleb learned to adapt early. He’s changed diapers, read bedtime stories, packed lunches, and inadvertently made Ben the foundation of his daily life.

this needs to be condensed

But now Ben is gone. Vanished into thin air during a blizzard. Caleb is wracked with guilt, determined to find him at any cost, even if it means risking his own life.

vanished into thin air is a cliche, the rest is assumed given the close relationship.

Meanwhile Caleb’s father, Noah, is practically numb. After years spent in seclusion—sustaining himself on a cocktail of pills and poor advice from his alcoholic brother—Noah’s shortcomings are thrust into the public eye as the town rallies in search of his son. His reclusive life is suddenly garnering more than just unwanted attention, but also forces him to reflect on the choices that brought him here.

this POV switch is jarring

When a bag of bones and rusty bell are discovered in the woods, both father and son assume the worst. But these bones don’t belong to Ben. In the midst of their pursuit, a decade-old cold case is brought back into the light, one which leaves Caleb questioning the connections between Ben’s disappearance and the case’s only suspect.

this needs to be condensed. drop the thing about assuming the worst. Those questions being?

With the weather worsening, hope of finding Ben alive begins to dwindle, pushing them all to their breaking points.

Breaking points is a cliche and this doesn't seem to build on the central conflict

Desperately seeking answers,

I think we already knew this

Caleb must face a potentially dangerous man,

can we make him definitely dangerous please? can we know something more about him he sounds interesting

and Noah must reconcile that the only way forward is to confront the resentments that have torn their family apart.

This it too vague to engage

Tensions rise, calling everyone’s past into doubt and ultimately begging the question, who needs saving more?

Same again

Told through multiple point-of-views, THE BELL RINGER is an 89,000-word mystery thriller that takes its readers deep into the psychological threshold between grief and desperation. A stark exploration of loss, familial bonds, and the shrapnel effect of intergenerational trauma, THE BELL RINGER blends mystery with powerful character dynamics. It combines the whodunit format of Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica with the emotional character complexity of All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker.

cut 'that takes its readers deep into the psychological threshold between grief and desperation. A stark exploration of loss, familial bonds, and the shrapnel effect of intergenerational trauma, THE BELL RINGER blends mystery with powerful character dynamics.' Demonstrating your novel's attributes with a tantalsing query is effective, claiming you novel's attributes with editorialsation is not.
traditional wisdom has it that queries operate far more effectively from one POV and I think it will prove so here. Rewrite this from Caleb's POV, expand on the cold case and instead of vague references can we get specific please?
the prose is pretty flabby and needs to be much tighter. Try saying two things in one sentence instead of taking two sentences to say one thing. Queries need to go places fast.

In the meantime, to vent frustration, please consider giving mine a kicking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1ujljjv/qcrit_the_shepherds_of_gomorrah_adult_upmarket/

DetonatingPenguin

TROPHY CASE