The ultimate query letter?

Literary agents are a picky bunch.

We all know a manuscript has to have the best opening sentence ever, and deliver an intriguing plot on page one, in a genre which the agent believes might be the Next Big Thing. A hopeful author will, of course, also need a snappy synopsis that makes the agent rush to read more.

Now, alerted by my friend Alan, I realize this is not enough; one also has to have the perfect query letter.

I have downloaded How to Write a Great Query Letter by Noah Lukeman, and am halfway through reading it. Some of the advice is common sense; don't use cheap or coloured paper, or an unusual font, don't write more than a page. He has some useful insider knowledge, having been an agent himself for many years; apparently, it is a convention in the publishing industry that book titles are set in caps; 'This alone can signal a pro'.

Some advice, though, is kin to my daughter's superstition that for exam success, it's as well to wear spotty socks, and the brighter the spots the better. Using A4 paper is bad, for example; it needs to be 8 1/2 x 11 inches. Can this be true?

I have now got to the nitty-gritty about what to put in my Three Paragraphs (you're only allowed three) and there's still seventy pages to go.

I know what I'm going to be doing over the next month.

Here is one of my favourite quotes, from Nerve, by Dick Francis. The hero is talking about what he learnt from his mother, a pianist;

'Professionalism, for instance; a tough-minded singleness of purpose; a refusal to be content with a low standard when a higher one could be achieved merely by working'.