Query Letter: Invisible City: An acclaimed, award-nominated debut

Invisible City, Julia Dahl’s critically acclaimed debut (originally titled The Stringer) was a finalist for an Edgar and Marry Higgins Clark Award.  Dahl tells the story of a young journalist covering the murder of a Hasidic Jewish woman while searching for her mother, who abandoned the family when she was a baby.  You can order a copy of the novel that BookPage called "riveting stuff indeed" here: https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-City-Rebekah-Roberts-Novels/dp/1250043395

Dahl was kind enough to share the query letter for her page turner:

Stephanie,

My former colleague Gillian Flynn suggested I email you with a pitch for my novel, “The Stringer,” a mystery about a New York City tabloid reporter who gets tangled in the murder of a Hasidic woman.

“The Stringer” is the story of Rebekah Roberts, a recent college graduate who has moved from Missouri to New York partly to become a reporter, and partly to be closer to her mother, who abandoned her as an infant and may be living in Brooklyn. Rebekah’s mother was a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg who became pregnant and married her Christian father during a period of rebellion. She fled the family just weeks after Rebekah was born and neither Rebekah nor her father has heard from her since.

The novel begins when Rebekah is called to cover a dead body, found dumped and naked in a scrap pile along the Gowanus canal. The dead woman is Hasidic, and Rebekah is shocked to learn that not only will she will be buried without an autopsy – but that because of the NYPD’s habit of kowtowing to the powerful ultra-orthodox community, her killer may get away with murder.

Rebekah finds herself drawn into the mystery of how this woman died, and teams with Saul Katz, an NYPD captain and orthodox Jew. Through Saul, she learns about the cloistered, cryptic world her mother grew up in – but Saul has secrets of his own, secrets that put Rebekah directly in the path of the killer.

I see “The Stringer” on the shelves alongside Gillian’s novels, as well as works like “The Serialist” by David Gordon, “So Much Pretty” by Cara Hoffman, “Lush Life” by Richard Price, “Black and White and Dead All Over” by John Darton, and the novels of Tana French. At just under 70,000 words, the book is a tight tale, unfolding over one week in the winter of 2010. I see it as the first in a series of three books featuring Rebekah Roberts, Saul Katz, and Rebekah’s mother.

In terms of platform, mine is straightforward: I am a journalist specializing in crime and criminal justice. I spent three years as a stringer on the city desk at the New York Post, and now work as an associate producer for CBS’s 48 Hours Mystery, where I also write about crime for CBS News.com. I have written about everything from teenage girls who kill their parents to police suicide to underage prostitution for publications like the Boston Globe Magazine, Salon, The Daily Beast, Seventeen and Miller-McCune, among many others. (You can see my work and resume at www.juliadahl.com)

As you may have noticed, the world of Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jews has lately become part of the zeitgeist. Deborah Feldman’s memoir “Unorthodox” made the New York Times best seller list in February, and the recent series of articles in the Times accusing Brooklyn’s District Attorney Charles Hynes of giving the ultra-orthodox special treatment when it comes to sexual abuse in the community dovetails exactly with the themes of “The Stringer.”

I have attached the first 50 pages of “The Stringer” for your perusal. I look forward to hearing from you. And a huge congratulations on the review of "Gone Girl" in today's Times - I can't wait to read it!

Best,

Julia