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The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet: A Book Club Discussion

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About the Book

In a world he can’t afford, Edward is just about getting by. He spends his days scurrying after his friends, doing everything to prove his value. But not to worry; the attention of his beloved Stanza and the respite he finds in her ancestral home, Kellerby House, provide all the reward he needs.

Until he realises that Stanza is in love with his best friend, Robert, forcing Edward to re-evaluate what those closest to him are actually worth. No price is too high to stop the life he has strived for slipping from his grip. Especially when he won’t be the one paying.

Format: Paperback (384 pages) Publisher: Faber and Faber
Publication date: 27th February 2025 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Crime

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The Discussion

The Kellerby Code was the April pick of the book club run by Waterstones in Reading.

Everyone agreed the book was very funny. As you’d expect from an author who started out as a comedian, there are great one-liners, witty dialogue and acerbic observation. For example, when Edward is introduced to one of Stanza’s schoolfriends, Dinita.

They were told immediately that she was heading up inclusivity, diversity and outreach at Hendepul, a global television firm, and that her employers didn’t at all understand black youth. Dinita had moved to London from Iran, where her father was involved in oil, been educated at public school and now lived in a large house in Notting Hill, but still: ‘These people just do not understand the average immigrant experience.’

There are some very amusing scenes. One I’d pick out is a dinner party hosted by Robert at which, as a parlour game, each guest is handed a folded piece of paper describing a personality trait or conversational tic they must perform. At the end of the evening others must guess what it was. Edward adopts his given persona so enthusiastically it causes alarm to other guests. However, there was a point in the book (involving a horse) where people felt the humour tipped over into absurdity.

Quite a few of us found pretty much all the characters unlikeable. Personally that meant I couldn’t really care what happened to them whilst others absolutely rejoiced in a book with so many unlikeable characters. There were mixed opinions about Edward. Some felt sorry for him. Others (me included) felt his original actions had unintended consequences meaning he increasingly lost control of events. One person, drawing on the comparisons to Patricia Highsmith’s character Ripley, thought Edward was a portrait of a psychopath. And they had a point because events turn increasingly macabre with Edward displaying an unexpected, or perhaps up until now repressed, capacity for violence.

The author is a devotee of P. G. Wodehouse and there are plenty of nods to the Jeeves stories. For example, Edward’s surname is Jevons and he acquires a sort of inner voice he names Plum, which was Wodehouse’s nickname. Edward performs butler-like duties for his friends, Robert and Stanza, such as picking up their dry cleaning, organising birthday presents and preparing meals. Desperate to retain Robert’s friendship, he’s happy to act as ‘fixer’ but the problems he’s asked to tackle for Robert go way beyond anything Jeeves might have had to sort out for Bertie Wooster. And although Bertie may have been hapless at least he was amiably hapless. I felt Robert was completely self-absorbed, sucking up to Edward when he needed something and then ghosting him when it was done, or even denying he’d asked Edward to do it in the first place.

I was surprised, bearing in mind the cover, that Kellerby House doesn’t actually feature much until near the end of the book and that, considering his supposed devotion to the place, Edward’s final act seems rather bizarre. There was a lot of discussion about the ending which I’m not going to detail here but safe to say there are a few ways you could interpret it and the motivations of those involved.

Our discussions often lead to thoughts about similarities to other books. People came up with (obviously) The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith but also The Secret History by Donna Tartt and the film ‘Saltburn’.

Although I was more lukewarm about The Kellerby Code than some other book club members, I still found a lot to enjoy in it. It was definitely a great choice for a book club because it provoked a lot of different views. In fact, the discussion could have gone on for much longer than the allotted hour.

The Kellerby Code is an entertaining mystery/thriller with a generous helping of black comedy. If you’ve seen the film ‘Wicked Little Letters’ (for which the author wrote the screenplay) you’ll have an idea what to expect.

About the Author

Author Jonny Sweet

Jonny Sweet started out winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer in 2009, and in the intervening years, his work as a writer and actor has been varied and exceptional. His first feature was Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley. Alongside writing and acting, he develops and produces TV and film through his award-winning company People Person Pictures. The Kellerby Code is his debut novel. (Photo: Amazon author page)

#WWWWednesday – 7th May 2025

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Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

What I’m Currently Reading

Two of the books on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and a book from my NetGalley shelf

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)

Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: feckless, jobless, in need of a distraction.

Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads. They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food.

And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.

It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of. What could possibly go wrong?

The Book of Days by Francesca Kay (Swift Press)

Anno Domini 1546. In a manor house in England a young woman feels the walls are closing round her, while her dying husband is obsessed by his vision of a chapel where prayers will be said for his immortal soul.

As the days go by and the chapel takes shape, the outside world starts to intrude. And as the old ways are replaced by the new, the people of the village sense a dangerous freedom.

My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende, trans. by Frances Riddle (Ballantine Books via NetGalley)

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can’t contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

What I’ve Just Read

Days of Light by Megan Hunter (Picador)

Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. In the idyllic Sussex countryside, her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather for lunch, awaiting the arrival of a longed-for guest.

It is a single, enchanted afternoon that ends in tragedy.

Days later, at a funeral, Ivy is kissed by the man she will marry, and grieves with the woman who will become the love of her life. And this is only the beginning . . .

Chronicling six pivotal days across six decades, Days of Light moves through the Second World War and the twentieth century on a radiant journey through a life lived in pursuit of love and in search of an answer. (Review to follow)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

Traitor’s Legacy by S. J. Parris (Hemlock Press via NetGalley)

England, 1598. Queen Elizabeth’s successor remains unnamed. The country teeters on a knife edge.

When a young heiress is found murdered at the theatre, the Queen’s spymaster Robert Cecil calls upon former agent Sophia de Wolfe to investigate.

A cryptic note found on the dead girl’s body connects to Sophia’s previous life as a spy, and her quest soon takes her into dangerous waters. Powerful enemies emerge, among them the Earl of Essex: the Queen’s favourite courtier and a man of ruthless ambition.

This is a murder that reaches directly into the heart of the court. And Sophia is concealing a deep-buried secret of her own. She must uncover the truth before her past threatens to destroy her.