What exactly is "misleading" here? He doesn't owe you a request just because your novel has an element that he's interested in. When you go to the bookstore do you feel obligated to buy every book with romantic subplots because you're interested in romantic subplots? Or do you look at the other elements of the novel as well?
A writer is not warranted anything more than a form rejection. Doesn't matter how strong the premise or writing is. For whatever reason your query didn't excite him. That's all. It may excite another agent.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but what evidence do you have that your work is strong? I ask because once you have 50 posts (and so have contributed to the forum and gotten to know us, and vice versa) you can post your query and a sample of your work in our password-protected
Share Your Work forum (password is vista), and get some feedback on it. It's often immensely helpful to go ahead and offer feedback to others; read the critiques already there and see how they apply to your own work, and critique the work of others. It's a great way to get to know our members, and to learn about writing in general and your work in particular. (And the bonus is that after you offer feedback to people they're sometimes more inclined to offer it to you!
)
I know how disheartening it is to get a rejection, especially when you really believed the book was a strong fit for the agent and you really believe in the book (which of course you do, or you wouldn't be querying it). Believe me. This is a tough and painful part of a tough and painful job; of course some of it is wonderful, but other parts are soul-crushing. Unfortunately, as Hyman Roth said, "This is the business we've chosen." And you will, as you go on, begin to look at it with more distance. It never gets easy but it will get easier, and as you learn more about the industry you'll feel a lot better about the whole thing.
Some agents get hundreds of queries per week. Most of them do, in fact. They don't have time to offer detailed feedback on all of those (since they're busy actually representing their clients), and even if they did what would be the point? What one agent hates another may love. What bores one excites another. Telling you what they think would improve your query only helps make it more tailored to them, and they already aren't interested for whatever reason. It may be the writing or story. It may be they already represent a similar book. It may be they have a pet peeve about characters who do X or Y. It may be any number of reasons.
Pretty much every published novel you see on the shelves has gotten a form rejection from at least one agent. Because just like you don't love every single book you read or want to buy every single book you pick up--even if it's in the genre you love--so agents don't love every single query they get or want to represent every single book they get queried for.
Here's what it boils down to: They're not interested. It's not right for them. It doesn't matter why. Another agent might be interested and might think the work is just right for them. Forget this agent and work on finding the one who is.
(FWIW I don't believe Dr. Stender is particularly effective as an agent for fiction, anyway.)
And welcome to AW!