So, I succumbed to the hype.

It feels like I’ve been hearing about the mystery of Elly Conway for months. The massive bidding war for the book – and then the distribution rights to the film. The mysterious Insta account. The Swift rumors. Underlying it all, a thrilling spy novel that could be the start of a fantastic crime series.

I’ve been mildly curious since I first heard about this – though certainly not part of the hype wagon. And so I figured I’d order the book and give it a read. Worst case, I’d get to read a novel with, ideally, meta-fictional elements. After all, the film’s trailer has a pretty fun premise – the author who writes extremely realistically and ends up embroiled in her own spy drama. And I love me some good meta-fiction – so what’s the worst that could happen?

Your standard spy story

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Argylle is fine. It’s a fish-out-of-water spy novel. I grew up reading the Alex Rider series and this has hints of that plot. The story somewhat follows the titular Argylle, a reluctant hero torn from the Vietnamese jungle to spy for the CIA. It hits all the plot beats you’d expect: the refusal of the call, working hard to get accepted on the team, a heroic sacrifice. There’s a Soviet government conspiracy, and a glamorous ball with shiny outfits. There’s literally a Nazi art hoard. It’s like someone asked ChatGPT to expand the outline of a ChatGPT-written spy story.

You will notice I say “somewhat”, because beyond Argylle, the story also includes the enigmatic Frances Coffey. Frances leads the CIA operations and takes special interest in Argylle. She bears a lot of weight on her shoulders and we see more depth to her than other, similar characters. She’s hiring great spies and making tough calls with their lives, and there are moments of pause where you can tell it how weighs on her. Plus, she’s got interesting roots – she worked her way up to the top from a librarian position at the Agency. Much more interesting, IMO, than the “reluctant perfect spy” we get in Argylle – give me more Frances.

All this to say, the book was – fine. If I had thought it were just a spy novel, I probably would have relaxed into it. After all, I love White Collar, which drew out a much longer, sillier Nazi art hoard plot – I can take a bit of mystery silliness. But instead, I had months of marketing hype in my head…

Marketing mind games

The marketing hype around Argylle has been tremendous. And it’s promised a few things: 1) that this book is excellent enough to drive multiple bidding wars; and 2) that this book inspired a star-studded movie with a meta-story, suggesting its own meta-plot. This set up a clear rubric – was this an excellent, thrilling spy story with a meta-plot?

Well, no. And that led to more disappointment than if I’d just read the book, with no expectations.

This marketing and messaging totally changed my experience of reading. It might have been silly, but I kept wondering when the plot would break to introduce the meta-elements. It’s hard to immerse yourself in a novel when you keep wondering if it’s going to break off to include an author-insert. And it’s hard to take a book seriously as the center of a bidding war when it literally includes a shoot-em-up with Soviet spies for stolen Nazi art. This marketing literally distracted me from enjoying the novel on its own terms and coming to my own judgement. Instead, it set up impossible expectations for an intrigued reader, only to inevitably disappoint them.

Why do I care?

This is not the first time I’ve been led astray by marketing hype on novels. I get particularly frustrated when books are misclassified – mysteries aren’t solvable; “bookish” stories are adventures, etc. After all, you expect some level of over-hype – nobody’s going to publish a quote that say their book is terrible. But it feels fair to expect that I should know what I’m getting into when I start the book.

I love reading. I love books. I want to read and love as many as I can, and I try to give them the best shot for that to happen. That means I take things like genre classifications and descriptions very seriously. After all, reading a book when you’re in the wrong mood can totally sour you on it, for no fault of the book itself. And so these misclassifications effectively rob me of the best chance to love a book, by giving me the wrong rubric.

My best guess: who is Elly Conway?

After all this, what do I think is going on with Argylle? If I had to make a bet, I’d say Elly Conway truly doesn’t exist. Instead, Matthew Vaughn wanted to to produce another fun spy story – with a twist! – and some clever producer decided to ride on the Book Hype Wave. Having decided that a mysterious series could be an excellent merchandising vehicle and hype driver, they farmed out the actual writing to a book packager, and proceeded to create a marketing mess.

(I do believe there was a bidding war for the movie. No reason to not want the next spy movie from the Kingsmen guy.)

Finishing Argylle made me tired and frustrated. I don’t need my books to have deep external lore to love them. All I’m asking for is fun writing, a decent plot, and reasonable understanding of the story going in. And to be fair, most of the time, I get that in my ARCs and other reads – just that this really stuck out as the worst misdirection.

Luckily, I’ve got a very fresh-feeling palate cleanser coming up next. Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!