If Taylor Swift Didn’t Write ‘Argylle,’ Then Who Did?

The central mystery of Argylle, an upcoming spy thriller starring Dua Lipa as a femme fatale and Henry Cavill as the titular detective, lies not within the film itself, but the cryptic novel that allegedly inspired it. After all, it’s not every day that Apple shells out a reported $200 million for rights to an unpublished book from a first-time author—or goes to great lengths to shield said writer’s identity. 

Released on January 9 by Bantam Books and Penguin Random House, the book is credited to someone named Elly Conway, a moniker shared by the film’s main character, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Throw in a few tangential ties to the world’s biggest pop star and some expert question-dodging by director Matthew Vaughn, and a puzzling origin story has officially been sold.

Before the film finally hits theaters on February 2, let’s review the rumors about Taylor Swift’s involvement and theorize about who is actually behind the year’s most enigmatic book.

What is Argylle, and who is in it?

Argylle is a Romancing the Stone–style caper about Elly Conway, “an introverted spy novelist” who gets “drawn into the activities of a sinister underground syndicate” played by Howard, according to the film’s synopsis. Directed by Vaughn (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class), the film is written by Wonder Woman scribe Jason Fuchs and features a star-studded cast including the aforementioned Lipa and Cavill, as well as Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, Rob Delaney, and Catherine O’Hara.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Vaughn explained Argylle’s story-within-a-story conceit: Howard’s Conway, he said, is “the J.K. Rowling of spy books. She’s agoraphobic. Her idea of a hot date is staying at home, writing more of her book, with her cat for company. She’s not a victim, because she’s really successful and really funny and really smart, but she has issues.” Within the film’s universe, Cavill and Lipa’s characters are not “real”—they’re fictional creations from the onscreen Conway’s new novel. 

The book on which Argylle is allegedly based, by contrast, is “a straightforward thriller with none of the tricksy conceits of the film,” and therefore safe for viewers with “an aversion to winking metafiction,” according to The Telegraph.

And is Elly Conway a fictional character, or a real person?

That’s where things get weird. By all accounts, Conway is Howard’s character in the film, but not an actual human being. There are no photos of her on the internet, and her author bio on the Penguin Random House website is oddly brief: “Elly Conway was born and raised in upstate New York. She wrote her first novel about Agent Argylle while working as a waitress in a late-night diner.”

What’s stranger still are online attempts to pass Conway off as real. Both X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram contain profiles under this name that have a handful of vague posts, but there is no way of validating who is actually posting from either account. The Washington Post reporter Sophia Nguyen attempted to contact businesses Conway has tagged on social media. All of them, Caffe Reggio to Westsider Books, have seemingly played along with the plot. The latter emailed Nguyen, “We did see that Elly posted about the store, we’re glad to hear it is a place she feels at home!”

There’s not much more to be gleaned from the actual book’s dedication, which reads: “For Mom and Dad, who have been beside me every step of the way,” or an author’s note, which states that the idea for the book came to Conway in a “febrile dream” that occurred after a “terrible accident.”

Have books written by fictional sleuths been published before?

Yes, there is precedent for such a move. Novels have been published under the name Richard Castle, the crime writer turned amateur detective played by Nathan Fillion on ABC’s Castle, as well as Jessica Fletcher, Angela Lansbury’s character on Murder, She Wrote. The difference is that unlike Argylle, in those instances, both publishers were forthright about the fact that ghostwriters actually penned the books.

Okay…but how did Taylor Swift get tangled up in this?

Amid the initial release of Argylle’s promotional materials last fall, some began digging into Conway’s origins. A search for her name yielded ties to a fictional character on the long-running Australian soap opera Neighbours; that character made her first appearance on the series on December 13, which also happens to be Swift’s birthday.

With at least one connection established, Swifties did what they do best, spinning a theory compelling enough to drive multiple news cycles. Here are some of the supporting facts that circulated online: Bryce Dallas Howard shares a resemblance, they said, to the red-headed author Swift plays at the end of All Too Well: The Short Film. Swift also has a documented appreciation for argyle clothing, which has been sold as part of her official merch. The film’s marketing has featured a Scottish fold cat named Chip; Swift owns two felines of that breed and has used a cat carrier backpack that’s very similar to the one Elly totes in the film’s trailer.

But while Swift has used a pseudonym for songs in the past, Vanity Fair’s sources confirmed last October that the singer was not, in fact, the author of the book.

So if she’s not involved, why are the Swifties unconvinced?

That may have something to do with the fact that the official Argylle account on X has embraced the speculation by tweeting lyrics from multiple Swift songs. It wasn’t until November 3, after multiple headlines speculated about Swift’s participation, that Conway’s account tweeted, “Hello to my new followers. Today I find myself saying the strangest thing, but here goes. I’m not Taylor Swift! We both love cats and I adore her music. I’m sure that when she writes a book she will use her name and it will be as brilliant as everything she does.” (The replies are full of fans declaring that this is exactly what Swift would say to throw people off the scent.)

But the filmmakers must be eager to set the record straight, right?

Not especially. Last October, Universal Pictures didn’t respond to a request for comment from Vanity Fair about the Swift speculation. When a VF staffer asked a studio rep after a screening whether the film itself was actually based on the recently released book (or if the book was merely a movie tie-in), the person stated, “I can neither confirm nor deny!” (Penguin Random House and Apple TV+, which will release the film after its initial theatrical run, also did not provide comment to The Washington Post earlier this month.)

Vaughn finally broke his silence on the rumors this week, telling Rolling Stone in a recent interview, “I’m not a big internet guy, and it was actually my daughter who came up to me—this is the power of celebrity and the internet—and said, ‘You never told me Taylor wrote the book!’” he recalled. “And I’m looking at her going, ‘What are you talking about Taylor Swift wrote the book? She didn’t write the book!’ And I was laughing because I was like, ‘It’s not true! She didn’t write the book!’ But my daughter was convinced of it.”

He continued: “There is a real book…and it’s a really good book. And there is an Elly Conway who wrote the book, but it’s not Taylor Swift. And I say that because I imagine Taylor Swift has a load of people trying to jump on her bandwagon left, right, and center, and I don’t want to be a part of that club. I did read the conspiracies and I was like, Wow, they don’t leave a stone unturned! But it’s not Taylor Swift. She definitely didn’t write the book.”

Could Vaughn himself be the secret author?

“I wish I had Elly’s talent to write such a fabulous novel, and I feel very lucky that I got to make the first Argylle movie,” Vaughn said in an email sent to the New York Post via his agent. It’s worth noting that copyright to the novel is held by Marv Quinn Holdings Limited, a company that appears to be registered to Vaughn and his wife, Claudia Schiffer, indicating that they may have enlisted an author to actually compose the book.

In her reporting, The Washington Post’s Nguyen spoke with Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, who is one of three people thanked in the acknowledgments section of Argylle. During their conversation, Massey did provide the name of a novelist whom he advised on a manuscript for a contracted Penguin Random House spy thriller. But she didn’t go by the name Elly Conway.

Who are the other suspected writers?

The name Massey provided was that of Tammy Cohen, a British writer with a dozen psychological thrillers and historical dramas written under three names—Tammy Cohen, Tamar Cohen, and Rachel Rhys. She did not respond to an email from the Post. Neither did her literary agent, Felicity Blunt, who is married to Stanley Tucci—an actor who appeared in Vaughn’s 2021 film, The King’s Man. The only possible allusion to this project on Cohen’s Facebook page arrived in February 2023, when she teased “an exciting SECRET PROJECT”—one that has yet to be disclosed.

There’s also speculation that Argylle could have been written by Terry Hayes, author of I Am Pilgrim, which was once set to be adapted into a film directed by Vaughn. (VF was unable to reach a rep for Hayes for comment.)

What’s most compelling about this theory is that Vaughn made an unprompted mention of Hayes in an interview with Den of Geek last month. “It is interesting, because I’m like, Since when has anyone been interested in authors?” he began, adding, “Like, do you know who Terry Hayes is? So Terry rang me up, because he’s got a book coming out called The Year of the Locust, his new book which is coming out in a couple of [months]. And he laughed and said, ‘I wish I had as much bloody attention as Elly Conway. It’s ridiculous.’” (VF has reached out to a rep for Vaughn for additional comment.)

Is the actual book any good?

The novel debuted to middling reviews on Goodreads, many of which are only concerned with speculating about the Swift of it all. The Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge said in his review that while he “can’t quite endorse the grand claims by Matthew Vaughn on the cover–‘This is going to reinvent the spy genre,’” the book “is an excellent example of the action-thriller genre.” The Guardian’s Alison Flood called the novel “hugely melodramatic” and “rather silly,” but still “very entertaining.” However, she deemed Vaughn’s comparison to the Bond series to be an overstatement, writing, “Heir to Fleming is pushing it.”

So when will the mystery be solved?

It depends on who the author is, and how long we can go before the intrigue is no longer profitable. If the book’s writer winds up being a high-profile person, the studio could opt to unmask them prior to the film’s release for optimal buzz. After all, Vaughn and Conway’s social media handle only denied the Grammy winner’s authorship after Argylle’s official X account had leaned into the Swift rumors. But if the novelist is more under the radar, his or her identity may never be revealed. Why let the potentially anticlimactic truth get in the way of a juicy story?

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