Unanimous

Three one-to-one sessions with agents who had read synopsis and  the beginning of  'Step so Grave' but not very far beyond I suspect.  The message - too much waffle at the beginning and the necessity of beginning a crime novel with a body - made more than a little more palatable for my having realised it myself just a couple of days before I arrived in York
One of the results of improving and learning the more you write.
The lessons further hammered home but, what was more important, potential tools to identify and find a solutions also suggested, by Jeremy Sheldon's workshop on 'Four plot problems you never knew you had';  Emma Darwin's Three and Five act structure; and C.M Taylor's 'Using Fatal Flaw to deepen theme and unite plot and character.'
 Another of Emma's workshops,  simple but highly effective, was her  'Plain and perfect, rich and rare.' demonstrating the benefits of working on sentences to make the best of them.