Imran Mahmood
‘In the robing room of Blackfriars Crown Court, I was sitting in a quiet spot trying to find the right words for my closing speech. The defendant I was representing was an intelligent young man and he’d given me a list of points that he wanted me to consider including in the speech.
‘When I got home I began to wonder about the speech I’d given and whether it would have sounded better or worse had the defendant written and delivered the whole thing. That was the moment that You Don’t Know Me was born and it became my debut novel.
‘Although I had always written short stories (never submitted, a jury speech from the perspective of a defendant, I suddenly felt I wanted the story to heard by a wider audience. Not because of any literary merit I felt it had, but because it dealt with what I saw as important themes. Was justice blind? Was there a two-tier justice system? Where did morality lie on the spectrum of justice? Was a person from one kind of background more culpable than another just because of the accident of his or her birth?
