Face--Lift 1466

Guess the Plot

It Comes All the Same

1. It Comes All the Same. IT COMES ALL THE SAME. it comes all the same. iT cOmEs AlL tHe SaMe.

2. Death and Taxes. Taxes and Death.

3. Nigel Ellis has a deal with Death: as long as he fills quotas as a grim reaper, he doesn't have to die. The catch? He can't mess with anyone's fates, as in he can only collect souls from people who are dying on their own. And he has to beat out every other grim reaper who made the same deal he did.

4. Harrison Moore was one of the richest men in the world. Now he's dead. Who had a motive? Actually, pretty much every person he ever knew.

5. Death and Time have been playing chess for as long as there has been life. But now the game has been interrupted. Do they restart the game or do they continue as is? Jordan sure would like to know, because last he remembers he is supposed to be dead.

Original Version

Dear (agent),

The devil comes in many forms, and Harrison Moore is [Was?] one of them. 

Set in 1930’s London, It Comes All the Same [Italicize title] is a 60k word mystery/ thriller told from multiple first-person points of view. When private detectives Nicholai Veidectte and Frederick Morfin are called in to solve the murder of Harrison Moore— one of the richest men in the country— they quickly discover this won’t be an easy solve. [Whattaya mean, "called in"? Hired?] Harrison Moore was not a man of few enemies, [Or, was a man of many enemies.] and when almost everyone in your life wants you dead, bringing your killer to justice won’t be easy. [Bringing your killer to justice is never easy, unless you're a zombie.] And to make matters worse, Nicholai and Frederick have three days to solve one of the biggest cases of their career, or the case goes to Scotland Yard. [Was that a Scotland Yard rule in the 1930's? We don't take any case until it's stumped all the private detectives for three days.?] The suspects are as follows: the wife, the sister-in-law, the maid, and the competition. [Who are the competition? The other richest men in the country? How did he make all that money?] But does a man as awful as Harrison Moore really deserve justice? Afterall, [two words] you don’t get to where he did without picking up a few skeletons along the way. [I'm not sure picking up skeletons is an idiom. Having skeletons in your closet is, but those skeletons, I believe, are secrets you wouldn't want revealed. Also, you've said he had many enemies, that everyone wanted him dead, and that he'd picked up a few skeletons made a few enemies  along the way, all of which say about the same thing. Plus, the phrase a "few" enemies seems like a massive understatement if almost everyone in his life wanted him dead.]

Our protagonist, Frederick Morfin, walks us through the case as him [he] and his partner, Nicholai, uncover the details of the murder. Our suspects provide flashbacks from their points of view, revealing their stories and vendettas, and of course, our dead man tells his tale, showing the kind of man he was before his rise to power and fall from grace. 

It Comes All the Same will appeal to readers who enjoyed the mystery and plot-twist elements of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, and the voice and character perspectives of I Eat Men Like Air by Alice Berman. [Italicize book titles] This book also resonates with the song The Fruits [Quotation marks around song titles] by Paris Paloma [Actually, I was thinking the book resonates with the song "You're So Vague," by Queens of the Stone Age.]  and is the song I often imagine playing at the last page of the book. [No need to imagine it;  just write it onto the last page.] [The song a book resonates with, whatever that means, is not useful information to include in a query.] This book also raises the very important question of how far people would go for love, and can murder be justified? [Does it also answer the questions?]

Notes

Useful information to include in a query: specific details about what happens. Here's what we know: Some unknown entity calls in two private detectives to solve the murder of some man who was rich and hated by everyone. One of the multiple narrators walks us through the case. Suspects provide flashbacks. We learn stuff about the dead guy's life. That's all vague. What is the detectives' plan of action to solve the case? Why are the particular suspects you mention considered suspects? Presumably we learn the answer in their flashbacks? Give us some specific examples of what Moore did to a couple suspects.

If this murder can be justified, I'm wondering why we should care whodunnit.