Another way to query your address book is to use mutt's `query_command`. The way I uses it a. when starting a mail, mutt asks me for 'To:', 'Cc:'. There type 'joe' press CTRL+T and I get either a list of results with results delivered by query_coammnd, or the line immediately expands to the result if there is only one. b. Similar with SHIFT+Q
At this point I can recommend notmuch which can be integrated into mutt quite nicely. -- Bastian