The Tail Section

ABC, ever on the lurk for ways to cash in on their hit shows, is going to be exploiting LOST as the marketing catalyst for a private detective thriller named ‘Bad Twin’ to be penned by an as yet unknown big-time mystery writer.

In the series, the book is written by a guy named Gary Troup, an ill-fated passenger of flight 815 who, sadly, never had the chance to enjoy any island bliss as he died in the crash. The book itself concerns a P.I. hired to find somebodies evil twin.
The book will be marketed, in the real world, as the work of said fictional Gary Troup who was lucky enough to submit his manuscript before vanishing without a trace along with the rest of flight 815.

I have the same problem with this as I did the fake news clippings on the channel 4 site. (Don’t ask me for a link, I loath them.) Doing something like this pierces the bubble. In the show, the island is a vaccuum; not knowing what, or if anything, is going on outside the island is part of the strangeness of the show, (along with not knowing where or when), and adds to the speculation. The last thing we need is something dropped on us in the real world that specifically dates the show, solidifies the plane crash, and limits — if we let it — the range of our speculating. No more saying the series takes place in the future because “Well the book was released in 2005 and was supposedly submitted just a year before so….”.

Of course the book may add some interesting new allusions to the mix. Too bad you will have to BUY it and read it to know about them. (Don’t worry, we’ll keep you clued in. Take that ABC.)

Expect this pricy bit of fan-bait around spring when the episode which *promotes* errrrrr introduces it will air.