Gatsby's Query Letter

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Dear ____________:

Gatsby's dead.  You know the story.  Fitzgerald's 1920's mob of style, privilege, loose morals and money currently lives on in Telluride, Colorado.  The world-class resort of exclusive trophy homes, priceless views, and eight-figure real estate deals breeds a new Lost Generation.  Any attempt to commercialize the pristine ambiance of this small mountain town’s undeveloped open space is likely to get you killed or worse.  Gatsby’s Last Resort: A Telluride Murder Mystery is new age detective fiction full of cows, sex, mysterious red heads, dead writers, and a spoiled Rocky Mountain community full of edgy characters we love to hate.

Off the bubble rather than hard boiled is the working theme of the Last Resort Detective Agency.  Wit Thorpe, his nine-year-old daughter Cody, and a well-healed millionaire barber are the main cogs in this dysfunctional machine.  Thorpe is a mixed breed Native American father, husband of the local district attorney, making ends meet by running a peeping tom service for aspiring divorcees looking to profit from their richer spouse’s infidelity.  He is trying desperately to turn his obsession with noire detective fiction into a marketable manuscript in order to close the door on his present occupation.  In his developing short story about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s search for a muse he creates on the page a mysterious redhead, inevitably he meets her in the flesh along the road to a series of hate-crime murders. Our hapless private eye is probably not guilty.

Telluride has been my home for the past ten years.  My professional writing resume spans four decades and includes over a hundred and fifty articles in periodicals raging from Sunset Magazine, Men's Health, Vogue, to Cruising World, Yachting, Travel and Leisure, Wooden Boat Magazine, and Sail.  From ten years I was a speechwriter and policy analyst for an Alaskan Governor (No, not that one!).  My poetry, short stories and essays have won numerous awards.  I presently pay the bills as a political strategist and campaign consultant for local, statewide and national campaigns.  

I would like the opportunity to let the finished manuscript convince you that Gatsby’s Last Resort: A Telluride Murder Mystery would be a valuable asset for your firm. May I send the work for your assessment?

Sincerely,

R. J. Rubadeau