[QCrit] SOE: ECHOES - Thriller - 86,000 words - 1st Attempt

Good morning all. I really wish I had found this thread before. I’ve sent my query to my first batch of agents. Already picked up on lots of points but posting what I sent (or a version as I tailored slightly for all the agents) to get feedback and improve for the next round.

If I have messed up with any of the rules on my first post I apologise. I have read the wiki and hope I have adhered to it. I would really appreciate all and any feedback.

Dear X,

A covert British academy takes gifted young people and turns them into deniable weapons for the state. When it engineers a false-flag terror attack to seize power, the eighteen-year-old it built has to become the weapon it intended in order to stop it.

SOE: ECHOES is a conspiracy thriller with an accessible speculative edge, complete at 86,500 words and the first of a planned trilogy that stands alone.

Emma Johnson is grieving the brother she was told died in Afghanistan when Colonel Winter offers her significance, danger and the truth about him. Minley, the academy he leads her into, gives her everything ordinary life never could, purpose, and status, before she learns what it really is: a machine that makes its recruits, uses them, and buries the ones who break. When she uncovers Operation Bridge, the attack it's about to unleash, she's sent to stop the very thing she was built to serve, at a cost that hollows her out.

It opens a hidden corner of the British state and is carried by a complex, compromised heroine — Slow Horses by way of Never Let Me Go — propulsive but morally grey, with belonging as its real subject: the truest thing in Emma's life, and the leash the institution holds.

The world on the page is drawn from my own. I'm a former British Army officer, DV-cleared, with an MLitt in Terrorism and Political Violence from the University of St Andrews; I worked hostile-environment close protection in Iraq and now manage country security in the region for a major international energy company.

SOE: ECHOES would be my debut. It's currently under consideration with a small number of other agents on a simultaneous basis, and isn't with any publishers.

I've attached a one-page synopsis and the full manuscript, as your guidelines ask. Thank you for your time.

Kind regards,

First 300 words:

Prologue – Red Velvet
Bucharest, Romania, October 2009
“Do we have to?” El asked, watching Noah arrive.
Cain ignored him and swilled back his beer. His long ginger hair dripped water down his flamboyant gym tank top, causing a dark stain to spread over its ‘sun’s out, guns out’ motif. He looked garish against Bucharest’s morning commuters.
Noah nodded as he sat, taking a beer from the table.
El sighed, sat back and gazed along the high-walled quay of the Dâmbovița River.
They sat and watched people come and go for a while, chatting about plans for leave. The usual end-of-operation nonsense to pass the time.
A weathered little wooden fishing boat pulled up at the dock, idled, then cut its engine as waves lapped against the stones. There was no netting in it. No tackle. Just a cool box and the bench seats, with gear stashed underneath. An operative dressed in fisherman’s clothes sat beside the outboard motor, smoking, his hand resting on the tiller. He didn’t glance at them as the three of them jumped down into his boat.
“Bike?” Cain asked, his foot on the stone wall of the river bank.
“Unlocked and left in the park. I’d be amazed if it was still there,” Noah added carelessly.
Cain nodded, kicked the boat away from the wall, and they began to putter out onto the river.
They sat in silence for a moment. Noah couldn’t sit still. Knee bouncing, eyes bright, already looking beyond the river.
“I’m going to go via Dracula’s castle, if either of you fancy coming,” Noah said suddenly. “Found a decent coach trip out there tomorrow.”
“Yeah, sure, that sounds decent.”
Cain raised an eyebrow at him, and El laughed. “Why not? Dracula’s castle, mate. How often do you get to do that?”