I have to admire whoever cooked up this story.
Someone wants you think that Elly Conway is really Taylor Swift. A whisper campaign has begun for a new novel called “Argylle” from a first time novelist. The case is being made that whoever Conway is, she’s planted clues in her book making people think she is Swift.
To make matters more confusing, in a couple of weeks director Matthew Vaughn is releasing his film of the book, with an all star cast.
When stories broke this morning, “Argylle” — which is in book stores — jumped from somewhere in the thousands on Amazon to number 438. Like magic. How else to goose a book by an unknown?
Back before you were born, in 1977, a rumor went around that an unknown pop group called Klaatu was really the reunited Beatles. I’m telling you, the rumor was rampant. The songs sounded Beatlesque. This was before social media and the internet, so the rumor really grew and sold records for Klaatu. The Carpenters even recorded one of their songs.
Klaatu was indeed not the Beatles.
It’s very unusual to see a novel issued so close to a movie’s premiere. Usually there’s a year or two in between. But “Argylle” is coming from Bantam, which is really a paperback house at heart. The hardcover is more like a souvenir for them.
Whoever is running Conway’s Instagram account is having fun with this mystery.They’ve just posted a copy of the first page of the novel. They’ve also posted shots of two book covers. One is titled “Everyone Here is Lying.” The other is called “Normal Rules Don’t Apply.” These are clues, you see, in the treasure hunt. Did Taylor Swift write a mystery book while touring and making dozens of records at a time? I guess anything is possible, but I’m sure the answer is very dull in the end.
