Find your hidden Woodhouse, Challenge your inner Highsmith. Here is The Kellerby Code. An intelligent debut novel, superbly written and worth reading twice. Spot on characterisation and setting. A plot with good pace, a slow burn at first and a great ending. It is difficult to say too much, not wanting to spoil it for the reader.
The novel begins with a prologue. It is November, Edward Jevons has been at Kellerby House for three weeks. He goes for an early morning walk in the grounds of Kellerby House, this is going to become a tradition for him and tradition is the architecture of society. He finds a human jawbone with only one tooth attached, it has a filling.
June: Edward is busy, making himself useful to his friends, Robert and Stanza who depend upon him. This particular day he is delivering Robert’s dry cleaning to the Almeida theatre, Robert is directing a play, he has champagne to celebrate some news. Edward of course fetches the bottle and opens it. Stanza arrives they drink and receive the news. Edward returns the bottle to the fridge and the curtain goes up, the novel takes flight.
Edward is a working class, illegitimate, scholarship boy, bullied at school but he harbours a violent secret. Edward wants nothing more than to be accepted by Stanza and Robert, his friends from Cambridge, to mingle with them and their friends on an equal footing. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their student days. Robert, who knows how he feels about Stanza, is an entitled narcissist. Stanza will inherit Kellerby House when her father dies. Edward is living in a world he cannot afford and to which he doesn’t belong thus he has become a general dogsbody to them. Edward collects and delivers Robert’s dry cleaning, organises flowers and appointments. He cooks, cleans and maintains the flat he shares with Stanza. Anything to preserve his friend’s happiness and keep him in their circle, after all they have class and breeding, all the things Edward covets.
A change occurs when Robert announces he has bought a house, followed by the news that he and Stanza are to be engaged. A character called D’Angelo comes onto the scene, he comes from Roberts’s past and then there is Plum. The plot thickens. The following November Edward is organising Edward is meticulously organising Stanza and Roberts wedding at Kellerby. Read on.
I do hope we will see more of Edward Jevons.
