Argylle

Main Review:

Remember Argylle? That cool-looking spy movie about author/amnesiac secret agent Elly Conway which spammed trailers featuring Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa into absolutely every corner of the Internet a few months ago? Well not only did I watch it, but I had a whale of a time doing so. It was so shamelessly silly that I was more than happy to turn my brain off and simply bask in its colourful carnage. It was only after I left the screening that I discovered I was very much in the minority of audience members as someone who enjoyed it.

A few days later, I learnt that in a brazen attempt by marketing executives to cash in, a ghost writer has been paid to assume the name of Elly Conway and write the first novel of the Argylle series. Naturally, as a fan of the film, I was curious to see whether this tie-in would be able to capture the spirit of the movie (even though it isn’t “the book of the film”), or whether it would be a soulless husk of a story that actually managed to sour the taste in my mouth.

You will be shocked to discover; it is the latter.

If I’m being charitable, I would describe Argylle as a “by-the-numbers” espionage story. If I’m being honest, the word I’m looking for is bland. Unlike the film, it takes itself far too seriously whilst telling an utterly shallow story devoid of the style or panache that made the movie itself so entertaining. At no point whilst reading did I feel engaged in the events being described. The plot is deeply formulaic, involving our ingenue special agent joining a team of generic operatives (none of whom are memorable enough for me to name) to stop the main villain (a shallow and reductive Russian billionaire) and his megalomaniacal plot. It’s definitely the case that it’s weaker than the sum of its parts, with the whole book practically groaning under the weight of having been churned out without any sort of passion or energy.

In terms of the writing style itself, it goes hard on verbosity, like a student desperately trying to meet the word count for an essay. Whilst this did remind me stylistically of the Maltese Falcon to begin with, it began to wear thin quickly, and increasingly put me more in mind of the walls of text which are generated by AI systems like ChatGPT. The aspect that most irritated me was the unending repetition of basic information. It was as if the book did not trust that I would be able to keep track of the main plot elements whilst I was reading.

In many ways, there’s not much more to say about Argylle because it’s all just so forgettable. Whilst not the worst book I’ve ever read on the blog, its utter mediocrity meant that it left no real lasting impression at all. Once done, I moved straight on to other books without even a moment’s hesitation or reflection. Fans of the genre, fans of the film, or fans of good literature should steer well clear.

Until the next time – Happy Reading.