Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.
I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.
If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.
If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.
My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
PC Noah Jones is traumatized by his failure to save the twins What twins? There's an assumed knowledge here that the reader doesn't have. from Nessie—a river monster that may or may not exist. Is this Nessie, as in the Loch Ness Monster? If so, I would clarify. It also does raise the question of genre - you're opening with a supernatural hook. It's working, but it's reading like Noah isn't questioning Nessie's existence Throughout the past year, he has blamed the village butcher for not letting him enter the river So... not Loch Ness? Again - clarify that day. When the same butcher is brutally murdered and the senior detectives are busy on a different, high-profile case, Noah knows that it’s up to him to not fail the village of Marybeth again. Unfortunately, he begins by mishandling a vital clue, which—if submitted for fingerprinting—would implicate him in the crime.
As Noah struggles to explain the perplexing mutilation of the butcher inside a locked room, he must also grapple with the return of his former friend, Jason. It is evident that Jason—a struggling author—has only returned to fictionalize the case and not to apologize for the childhood prank that left Noah with crushing PTSD. Good so far!
However, it’s the whispers that bother Noah the most. The whispers of Marybeth’s cursed past, sullied by a horrifying witch hunt and a tortured architect. What's the witch hunt? What does the architect have to do with anything? More here. The whispers of strange howls on full-moon nights, residents who speak to the Devil, and Nessie…
Next, a local fisherman is found dead next to the bloody inscription ‘Satan,’ the lost bodies of the twins appear in the butcher’s grave, and Noah is stabbed. To solve the murder,Which one? Noah must figure out which of his suspects—the abused widow, the possessed son, the unscrupulous doctor, or the adulterous vicar—committed the crime. And he must ensure that the conniving locksmith doesn’t report his psychiatric episodes Noah's? and hatred for the victim which victim? to his superiors.
But Noah just cannot get Nessie out of his mind. Afterall, he saw the monster’s tawny, purple hide with his own eyes… You'll need to clarify this from the beginning - Noah does believe that Nessie is real. How is this affecting his investigation?
Oscillating between the points of views of the wrong and the wronged, IF THEY WRONG US deals with how little secrets masquerade as big monsters. A murder mystery of 90,000 words, it should appeal to readers who enjoyed the ingenious whodunnit in Anthony Horowitz’s Close to Death and the preternatural happenings in Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water.
Really great comp titles here, and it sounds like a good setup. We just need clarity - first, this is set in the UK b/c Noah is a PC and the Nessie reference makes me think this is Scotland, but you mention a river and not the Loch, so that's confusing. The fact that this opens with a supernatural bent - and the MC is sold on it - is fine, but we need to see what kind of tension that creates in the plot, especially since Satan is getting tossed around as well. What does his mishandling of evidence have to do with the plot? How does Jason tie into the larger picture? What does his PTSD have to do with anything? Is it Nessie related? There's more than one murder here, so you'll have to clarify which victim / murder you're talking about at different points. Overall, this sounds really interesting, you just need to tie all the disparate elements together and clarify some things.