Face-Lift 1432

Guess the Plot

Finding Grace

1. Ballet and missing persons collide in a nunnery, 'nuff said.

2. After her cat, Grace, disappears, Jenny sets out alone to find the feline. Her quest takes her to several fantastical worlds where she meets good-hearted strangers as well as evil witches and mages. No word on how her parents handle the fact that their child is missing.

3. After listening to the song "White Rabbit," obsessive fanboy Barry Bindo claims a hookah-smoking caterpillar has called upon him to seek out and seduce singer Grace Slick. Hilarity ensues.

4. When her parents send her to a Paris charm school to cure her of her tomboy ways before she comes out to London society, Daphne rebels, causing an uproar at the school. Will she find grace and land the usual stick in the mud husband? Not if she can help it.

5. Desperate to escape his night terrors, Jack seeks out Grace, a woman he once met who hinted she could cure nightmares. But when he finally finds her, she not only doesn't cure him, she threatens to frame him for a murder she committed.

6. The Angel Sariel has lost their wings, and now they need to find them. A old lady named Grace was the last to see the wings, but keeps getting lost in her memories. Literally.

7. The true story of how Prince Rainier of Monaco, after seeing actress Grace Kelly's performance in Rear Window, kidnapped the Oscar-winning "Queen of Hollywood" and made her the princess of his puny "country" whose population is dwarfed by Hollywood's. She was never heard from again.

8. Grace is a good dog. One rainy night, she hears someone crying for help and flees into the night. She has been missing ever since. Grace's owner is a retired CIA assassin who will stop at nothing to get her back.

Original Version

I am seeking representation for my thriller Finding Grace (87,000-words) in which a man must avenge a murder he mustn’t allow himself to remember. [I forget a lot of stuff, but one thing I will never forget is something I'm making a conscious effort not to remember.]

Jack’s starting a new life in Los Angeles while waiting for his wife, Mara, to wrap up their affairs in Hong Kong. Alone in a strange city, he develops debilitating nightmares and [involving] a nameless dread lurking in shadows. He enrolls in self-defense classes where he meets [Grace,] a strangely familiar woman. Grace [who] hints at a cure for his nightmares, [Wait, she just met him and already knows about his nightmares?] but vanishes before he can learn more. 

[Who initiated their conversation? I can't imagine a woman approaching me and declaring, out of the blue, she can cure my nightmares, so maybe it went:

Jack: Hi I'm Jack. You look strangely familiar. What brings you to this class?

Grace: There've been some muggings in my neighborhood, and I want to learn to defend myself; how about you?

Jack: I'm having debilitating nightmares involving a nameless dread lurking in shadows, so I want to be ready to fight it off when it inevitably materializes.

At which point it's perfectly reasonable that Grace vanishes.]

When Grace shows up at his firing range she confides the torture-murder of her sister has given her the same nightmares plaguing Jack. She promises to cure his nightmares [If she's having the same nightmares, her claim that she can cure nightmares rings a bit hollow.] if he helps investigate her sister’s death. [If Jack was formerly a Hong Hong homicide detective, say so earlier. If he has no experience as an investigator, WTF?] Desperate for a good night’s sleep, he agrees. [I always sleep better after a day spent investigating a torture murder.] When she kills their first suspect in a frenzy, Jack wants out. Grace smirks that while Jack’s fingerprints are everywhere, she wore gloves. [No one wears gloves in Los Angeles. It's too hot for . . .

Okay I stand corrected. I did find this photo of a woman in Los Angeles grasping her best-actress Oscar while wearing gloves, but . . . Wait, isn't that Grace Kelly? So Guess the Plot #7 was the right one?! Unbelievable!] and threatens to go to the authorities. [Maybe the title should be Losing Grace, which I assume will henceforth be Jack's goal.] 

That’s when he finds Grace lies. A lot. About her sister, about who she is, and about the whip marks across her back. [More specific would be to tell us the lies: "Seems her sister's alive, she's an undercover cop, and she fell onto a barbecue grill." Same number of words as your sentence, but much more detailed] [When someone explains to me why they have whip marks across their back, I don't try to find out if they're lying.] [Actually, I pretty much don't care if they're lying.]. Jack should take the first flight back to Hong Kong. [No, he shouldn't. Nothing says "guilty" like hopping the first flight to Hong Kong when your fingerprints are all over a murder scene.] Only Grace knows impossible details about Mara, their nice little flat, and even their first date. [Not clear what that has to do with whether he goes to Hong Kong.] She reminds him, leave and your night terrors will consume you. [Has she cured him yet?] No, Grace isn’t who she seems. [She "seems" to be a devious liar and a murderer. Are you saying she isn't?] [Those last four sentences need better connections with each other.]

But neither is Jack. 

Finding Grace plays with the thriller genre like the 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle did with the mystery genre. Inspiration goes all the way back to Shutter Island and like the movie Memento, explores themes of perception, grief, and self-deception.

Notes

Your one-sentence description of the plot is "a man must avenge a murder he mustn’t allow himself to remember." I don't see why Jack needs to avenge either of the murders mentioned in the query. If Grace demands he kill her sister's killer, that would be a better plot point to mention than that she demands he investigate the murder, which leads to questions about whether he's even qualified to investigate a murder, especially a murder in LA, when he just got there. 

Whatever this book does that's similar to Evelyn Hardcastle, Shutter Island and Memento is worthy of being spelled out clearly. It's what makes this book different from most thrillers. Don't worry about spoilers.

Instead of throwing out hints that suggest Jack and Grace have a history that he doesn't remember, you might be better off telling us what that history is and why he doesn't remember. Secrets are better left for the back cover. 

Does Grace have supernatural abilities? I'm guessing no, as it isn't mentioned, and that would make it a different genre, but one could wonder if she can wipe someone's memory, vanish, cure nightmares . . . maybe even read minds if she knows things about Jack and Mara that she couldn't possibly know, knows when he'll be at his judo class and his firing range. I can come up with explanations for each of those, but they're adding up to a lot of stuff you don't want to explain.