Successful Queries: Gideon Pine and “A Gift Before Dying,” by Malcolm Kempt

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Gideon Pine for Malcolm Kempt's debut novel, A Gift Before Dying.

Malcolm Kempt worked as a criminal lawyer in the remote Arctic for 17 years before leaving to write full-time. He now lives on the island of Newfoundland.

Dear Mr. Pine,

My manuscript, Nightfall, recently won the 2023 Percy Janes Award for best unpublished novel where judges described it as a ‘delightful genre mash-up of police procedural and horror’. I have a short story, "Choose Your Own Demise", co-written with Stoker Award-nominee Richard Thomas, being published in the latest Qualia Nous anthology this fall which also features Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk. Everyone I know in the industry is telling me to get an agent, so here I am. 

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In was a massive influence on my work and I am hoping my voice-driven debut novel—best described as Ian Rankin’s Rebus meets H.P. Lovecraft in the Arctic—will be right up your alley. Nightfall is an 85,000 word crime story with strong horror elements based on Inuit myth and folklore, diverse characters of different ethnic backgrounds and set in an isolated village in the Canadian Arctic during the constant darkness of winter. It features a split POV with a failed police officer in the twilight of his career and a burn-scarred Inuit boy, both trying to solve a mystery while dealing with their own demons—both real and imagined. I spent over seventeen years living and working as a criminal lawyer in the many remote communities of the Nunavut territory, so I have a great deal of experience with Inuit culture, mythology and language and this is reflected in my manuscript. No one else seems to be writing modern day fiction set in this region and I want to tell a gripping story while showcasing its extreme conditions and fascinating culture. 

An unstable police officer, Corporal Elderick Cole, has been transferred to a remote Arctic community after his botched investigation resulted in the death of a child. When Pitseolala, a sixteen-year-old Inuit girl commits suicide on his watch, he tips over the edge into a downward spiral of substance abuse and insomnia. While his partner and the community pressure him to close the file, his investigation reveals that her death may be a calculated murder. Cole struggles to regain self-control and redeem himself by finding her killer, but finds himself questioning his sanity when confronted by the persistent ghost of the dead girl who seems to be slipping into oblivion. Pitseolala's troubled and disfigured younger brother, Maliktu, embarks on his own efforts to solve the mystery of his sister’s murder as he grapples with seemingly supernatural forces and a shamanistic darkness that is awakening within him. As a blizzard shuts the community off from the outside world, the killer reveals itself to be something more sinister than they could ever have imagined and only Cole and Maliktu working together can save the girl’s soul and their own lives.

I write a how-to fiction column at Litreactor.com. My short stories have been previously published in Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories, Canadian Dreadful: An Anthology, and Pantheon Magazine. Inhabit Media also published my non-fiction book in Inuktitut and English about traditional seal hunting methods of the Inuit. I have recently given up my criminal law practice and currently live in rural Newfoundland where I work part-time as a ghostwriter/editor.

I really hope you are interested in reading the manuscript and thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Malcolm Kempt

X (Twitter): @MalcolmKempt

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

I had only been working in the industry about a year when I received Malcolm's query. For whatever confidence I lack now, it was even more pronounced then, so when I saw that someone—or in this case, a few someone's—had already read this draft and deemed it award worthy, I said out loud, to no one, "Well, if someone already thinks it's good, maybe I will, too!"

I also had never even imagined before reading his query what life might be like in the Arctic (I had never even heard of Nunavut, much less Cape Dorset), and here I had someone who had actually lived there. Sense of place is one of the elements I look for in thrillers, and Malcolm brought that to the table in spades. I was totally transported. 

I also was drawn to how Malcolm was taking his writing pursuits seriously. The short stories, anthologies, and column in Lit Reactor signaled that he was all-in on making this midlife career change, and I wanted to be the agent to help him make his dream come true (and mine—this was the first novel I ever sold!!)

__________________________

Born and raised in Westchester County, NY, Gideon Pine joined InkWell Management after a decade working in a variety of industries, including commercial production, advertising, and humanitarian aid work.

Gideon specializes in representing top-notch thrillers/mysteries/suspense novels, both commercial and literary, upmarket domestic fiction with a dash of suburban dysfunction, book club fiction. Genre mashups are always welcome, especially a thriller with a dose of the supernatural. 

Previously, he attended Indiana University and graduated with a degree in political science.