A query letter for Madness

Query letters are how you tell someone in charge to request your full book and that you are worth their time.  Does this make you want to read the book?  (Note the low word count.  I actually don't think this is publishable.)

Dear Query Shark:

Explotive journalist Levi Rucker is hoping the tiny African nation of Swaziland is testing chemical weapons on its citizens.  Fame and glory if he survives the story.

Lindiwe Dyuba is a female-turned-male drug lord who offers to guide Levi through Hell in exchange for the travel papers of Levi’s ex-living photographer.

Levi is callous, racist, sexist, and classist.  In America, that’s enough to be evil, but in Swaziland? He’s the nicest man Lindiwe has ever met.

Sex, drugs, and dismissive political commentary on gender roles in third world countries fill the road trip between two horrible people in a more horrible land.  Under special permission from King Mswati to show the world why Swaziland is the next hot tourist destination, the couple fakes compliance while moving ever closer to their goal of uncovering the lucrative details of the nation’s war crimes.

Each person Levi meets redefines madness in a story where normal is a movable goal post.  He finds the Swazi lifestyle bizarre until he meets Lindiwe.  He/she is only bizarre until he delves into the government of Swaziland.  When Geils, the deformed scientist, performs stand-up comedy to a drugged Levi, he swears that is as strange as anyone can be.  Until he meets the Mambo and sees what they do to corpses.

Every step of the way, Levi looks to exploit the nation.  Every step of the way, Lindiwe looks to escape the nation.  When the suffering overwhelms them, they try to save the nation.  They fail miserably.

MADNESS is my debut.  It’s a 47,000 word adventure. Thank you for your time.