[QCrit] Adult Mystery/Thriller, WORK OF AN ARTIST (80k/First Attempt)

Currently doing revisions on this and wanted to work on the query as a break. Would really appreciate any general feedback y'all may have as it may be pointing to bigger issues I need to iron out in this round of revisions.

Note on the comps: I know this is an older title of Swanson's, I picked it due to having similar writing style both in voice and prose. His more recent books lean more in the domestic thriller space and I didn't want that aspect to be what agents think of. The Slocomb comp is the opposite, not necessarily similar in writing style, but the "partner detectives" angle in a creative adjacent world felt appropriate as a recent title. Very open to suggestions on different wording or if I should keep searching on comps.

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Dear [agent name],

Henry Weaver has spent thirty years becoming one of New York's top art dealers by doing things his way. A forgery trial just found him guilty of it.

Then his partner goes missing. A painting arrives at his gallery, a figure rendered in his partner's blood by an artist no one can identify. With a detective who has decided both point to Henry, he can trust a system that's already made up its mind, or he can find the artist himself.

That means going to Elena Reyes, a painter he failed years ago and whose career paid for it, who has every reason to shut the door in his face. Together they work their way into New York's underground art scene, a world where everything Henry spent thirty years building is exactly the wrong thing to have. Every door they open, Elena opens. Henry is just the one who walks through.

What he doesn't know yet is that the person who made the painting, engineered the forgeries against him, and killed his partner is someone Henry failed first. Someone Henry once told that loving something isn't the same as being good at it. They never forgot it.

WORK OF AN ARTIST is a 80,000-word commercial thriller for readers of Peter Swanson's The Kind Worth Killing and Brendan Slocumb's Symphony of Secrets.

[Bio]

Thank you for your time and consideration.