Query Letter: The Lady Upstairs: A Darkly Feminist Noir

Halley Sutton has been on my TBR list since I saw her talking about noir and sounding like a boss at Bouchercon 2023.  The Lady Upstairs, her deep dark debut, was on Crimereads “best psychological thrillers” list.  PopSugar called it one of the most exciting books of Fall 2020, and Kirkus proclaimed it “sizzling.”  The story centers on a woman who earns her living blackmailing heinous men until one of her targets is killed and things take a frightening turn.  

You can order a copy of the novel BookTrib said is “crackling with wit and style” here.  (Next up on your reading list, Sutton’s bestselling thriller, The Hurricane Blond).

Sutton was kind enough for share the query for The Lady Upstairs, which also went through the PitchWars mentoring process in 2018. I don’t have any experience with Pitchwars, but it sounds like a wonderful resource and so far, several incredible writers tell me it helped launch their careers (I hope to include more on this later). Sutton's pitch:

Jo’s made a career out of ruining terrible men. She works for a woman known only as the Lady Upstairs, recruiting girls to seduce and blackmail the richest sexist pigs in Los Angeles. But if Jo doesn’t ace her next case—using the charms of a naïve blonde named Ellen to take down a notorious casting-couch king—the Lady’s threatening to replace her.

Jo thinks she has it handled. Sure, Ellen’s getting squirrelly, but it’s nothing that can’t be solved by stealing a little extra bribe money from the Lady’s stash. Jo’s sure as hell not going back to her old life—or leaving the woman she can’t quite admit she loves, her coworker Lou. 

Before long, though, Jo’s bad decisions have a body count, and the cops are closing in on the Lady’s whole operation. Jo hatches one more scheme: swindling a powerful local politician, then using his cash to skip town with Lou. But Lou’s been keeping secrets of her own, and not just about the identity of their mysterious employer.

THE LADY UPSTAIRS is a modern-day feminist noir novel with a femme fatale heroine, perfect for fans of SUNBURN by Laura Lippman and Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN. The manuscript is complete at 85,000 words, and it’s a standalone with series potential.

I wrote THE LADY UPSTAIRS while completing my MFA at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. I currently work in academic publishing, and I’m also a fiction editor for the Monday Night Lit literary magazine and a 2018 Pitch Wars mentee.

Please find the manuscript attached. Thank you for requesting to read more, and thank you for your time!