Title: You Don’t Know Me
Author: Imran Mahmood
Genre: Thriller
Publication Date: 4th May 2017
Publisher: Michael Joseph
ISBN 13: 9780718184254
Pages: 400
Started: 14th December 2017
Completed: 14th December 2017
Rating: 4/5
Summary: An unnamed defendant stands accused of murder. Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech. He tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out. Sometimes, the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe. But he thinks that if he’s going to go down for life, he might as well go down telling the truth. There are eight pieces of evidence against him. As he talks us through them one by one, his life is in our hands. We, the reader – member of the jury – must keep an open mind till we hear the end of his story. His defence raises many questions… but at the end of the speeches, only one matters:
Did he do it?
I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. Thank you to the author, Imran Mahmood, and the publisher, Michael Joseph, for this opportunity.
Imran Mahmood is a criminal defence barrister and You Don’t Know Me is his debut novel. He specialises in cases dealing with violent crime and sexual offenses.
You Don’t Know Me was chosen as a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice in 2017.
I love that this book is set out as a court defence speech where the defendant has dismissed his QC and has decided to tell the truth, or at least his version of the truth. The reader becomes a member of the jury and you have to decide for yourself whether he’s guilty or not at the end of the story. The plot is amazing too. It’s imaginative, perhaps too imaginative if you’re on a jury listening to it as a closing defence speech, and it’s full of plot twists. It’s so different to anything I’ve read before and I loved it. The ending is so frustrating though. I genuinely wanted to scream when I got to the end.
There’s also some humour in the book which is dark but almost appropriate. It’s almost like gallows humour. The unnamed narrator is trying to get the jury on side but he’s nervous too and both of these things show in his ‘jokes’. I laughed in very inappropriate places, like when the main character meets an Imam in a mosque and is disappointed that he doesn’t have a hook for a hand (stereotypes play a huge role in this book), but the narrator’s humour is almost a relief in such a disturbing story.
The characters are incredible. The main character, the unnamed defendant, is an amalgamation of several stereotypes of a black boy living on a council estate in London but he’s not a gang member. He’s likeable and normal, despite the fact that he’s being tried for murder, and the fact that he’s unnamed makes you realise that this could be any black boy who lives on a council estate in London because he falls into a group of people who are heavily stereotyped by society and are often viewed with an unwarranted wariness. He’s also a very unreliable narrator and that makes you question everything you think about this book.
I understand that the author is trying to accurately represent the slang that the black community use in London but it just felt a bit forced for me. Perhaps that’s because the opening of the defendant’s speech isn’t in the same tone or even in the same voice as the rest of the book. I’d love to know how a black writer would have written this. Would they have used the slang? Would it have flowed better? I can’t answer that question but while I do like the fact that the author tried I just felt like it was forced in some places.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it’s very different to other thriller books that I’ve read. I think I need to read more legal thrillers because this one was incredibly engaging and an enlightening read.
I will be buying this book in the future, once the paperback is released in April 2018, and I’d recommend it too because it’s a fantastic read.
Disclaimer: None of the links in this post are affiliate links.
Advertisements Share this:
