#251-Revised once

 
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Dear Query Shark,

Dr. Richard Hamilton, head of Physics at Livermore National Lab, is faced with the most difficult decision of his life. The machine he spent his whole career creating in secret, works. It can actually receive a message from the future. The problem is, ‘turn the machine off,’ was not the kind of message he was prepared for.

Sometimes holding on too long costs more than you’re willing to pay.

The Second Dimension is a complete 89,700 word thriller similar to the pace of Jeffery Deaver and the suspense of Preston/Child. I have been published in many periodicals and have extensive experience in theatre. This is my first novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 This works for me. I'm not sure if it would work for another agent but I like it a lot.  I like it because it sets up a human dilemma: you're told to do something without knowing why. We can intuit that the stakes are high. There's exquisite tension in that.

The first pages for this novel need to be superlative. There's absolutely no room for lackadaisical prose, misused words, flat pacing or opening with a phone call, weather or driving.  You've got my attention for about two more minutes.

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Dear Query Shark,
 
Dr. Richard Hamilton, head of Physics at Livermore National Lab, is faced with the most difficult decision of his life.  The machine he spent his whole career creating in secret, works. It can actually receive a message from the future. But it’s more than a miraculous wonder of science, its solace from a childhood nightmare veiled in his father’s blood. The problem is, ‘turn the machine off,’ was not the kind of message he was prepared for.  

This is one of the most enticing opening paragraphs I've seen in a while. Why does it work?

It sets up the situation and the problem very elegantly: the machine works is both the situation and the problem.

I'm enticed to read on.  That's the one thing a query must do.

Frankly, if this were the ONLY paragraph in the query, I'd read pages, and if they were good, I'd ask for the full manuscript. I’m always on the lookout for someone who can write the kind of books Patrick Lee does.

 
Captain Josh McGregor, fresh from the fly-ridden dust of Afghanistan, is on his way back home to Livermore. He returns as part of a military task force escorting a revolutionary new weapon to be tested at the lab. A non-lethal assignment and a chance to rekindle his romance with Richard’s daughter, Katie, is just what he needs to ease his PTSD. The EPA building exploding with ‘Anarchy for Christ’ crudely scrawled on its side, was not the welcome home he needed.

And this is the biggest splat you can have in a query. You've gone from saying enough to saying too much.  

This is too much because it introduces another protagonist who is a soldier returning from Afghanistan with PTSD.  Without doubting for a second that PTSD is a very real problem for a significant number of people who have been deployed in combat (or other people who've survived violent situations) it's often a cliché in novels.   It's often a lazy way to write a problem for a soldier.

Unless PTSD contributes significantly to the plot, leave it out of the query.

This is the answer to how do you know if you've written too much: you've written too much if the details aren't essential to the plot.

What more do you need to know than the machine itself is the problem?  Not much.
 
Richard’s world is crumbling. The new project is a pressure cooker threatening to devastate his career. A group of armed religious fanatics surround his lab, intent on ending his interference with God’s will. A meticulous assassin with an appetite for his victim’s tongues prowls the campus and Richard’s manipulation of time may be the cause. To disprove it, he must set a trap. He waits alone in a dank testing bay to find out if it’s all just a plot against him or if he needs to sacrifice his greatest creation.

And this is again too much detail.  It's absolutely not enticing to find out there are armed religious fanatics (one dimensional cliches) or meticulous assassins (also cliché) and we already know that the problem is the machine and he's going to have to contemplate destroying it.

Think of how a comedian would make a scary situation hilarious: "Want some candy, little girl?" the stranger asks.  The comedian changes it to "Want some little round green candy with dextrose, fructose and artificial colors, little girl?"

Too much detail kills the enticement.
Too much detail gives the reader a chance to think "oh hell no I don't want to read about religious fanatics" when, if you get the reader into the actual novel they're much more willing to read along.
  
The Second Dimension is a complete 89,700 word thriller similar to the pace of Jeffery Deaver and the suspense of Preston/Child. This is my first novel.

You could include this paragraph with the first one, too. 
 
Thank you for your time and consideration.


I think it's almost impossible to know that the one paragraph is enough.  I do think however that if you follow the template outlined in several other QueryShark entries you'll have a better chance of focusing only on the plot points that matter and leaving out the things that don't.

Revise.
Resend.

And you might read Patrick Lee's Breach trilogy just to see if that's a comp as well.