1
A museum archivist discovers that a supposedly lost painting has been hanging in a local courthouse for thirty years—but proving it may expose the forgery that built her mentor’s career.
13 Query Letter Examples
Use these examples to study structure, specificity, tone, and variation. They are demonstrations—not claims about a real person or organization unless the example itself makes that explicit.
Before you copy
What to notice in the examples
A strong query makes the project easy to evaluate quickly. It identifies genre and length, presents a compelling premise with specific stakes, and avoids trying to summarize every subplot.
- Lead with the project and premise unless a strong personalization genuinely matters.
- Name title, genre/category, and approximate word count clearly.
- Focus the pitch on protagonist, goal, obstacle, stakes, and distinctive hook.
- Keep the bio relevant to the project or publishing credibility.
2
When a night-shift courier receives a package for a tenant dead for a decade, returning it draws him into a surveillance network connected to his missing sister.
3
A burned-out school counselor inherits a rural motel where every guest leaves behind one memory they can no longer recall.
4
A climate reporter investigating a vanished river gauge learns the missing data was removed by the same engineer who designed the city’s new flood defenses.
5
A wedding photographer realizes one guest appears blurred in every image, including photographs taken years before the guest was born.
6
A language teacher accepts a translation job for a private peace summit and discovers one disputed phrase could restart the conflict.
7
A retired locksmith is forced to open one final safe when police find his childhood address engraved on the door.
8
A public defender receives anonymous case notes written in her own handwriting about a trial she has never worked.
9
Hook: A forensic archivist discovers that the typo connecting four shell companies also appears in the paperwork for her missing brother’s estate.
10
Bio: I am a municipal archivist with eight years of records-management experience; this is my debut mystery.
11
A query becomes clearer when the story paragraph centers on protagonist, goal, obstacle, stakes, and complicating choice instead of summarizing the entire novel.
12
A query for a dual-timeline novel should make the causal relationship between timelines clear instead of giving each timeline a separate mini-synopsis.
13
THE BORDER MAP is a 92,000-word adult fantasy in which an apprentice cartographer discovers that the empire’s maps physically enforce the borders she draws.
Keep the underlying decision or pattern, then replace the subject, evidence, relationship, constraints, and tone with details that belong to your situation. If your final line still works after swapping only one noun, it may be too close to the example.