Scala Radio Book Club: All I Said Was True by Imran Mahmood
A haunting exploration of memory and obsession, of guilt and betrayal – set against the backdrop of a thoroughly compulsive ticking-clock thriller
Last updated 25th Jul 2022
On Thursday 21st July, British barrister and author Imran Mahmood joined Mark Forrest in the Scala Radio Book Club, to discuss his brand-new novel All I Said Was True.
Imran Mahmood is a practising barrister with thirty years' experience fighting cases in courtrooms across the country. His previous novels have been highly critically acclaimed, with his award-winning debut - You Don’t Know Me - having been turned into a successful BBC drama, which is currently one of the most streamed shows on Netflix.
Imran’s third novel, All I Said Is True, is a highly addictive crime fiction thriller. The story begins with us being introduced to Layla Mahoney, a lawyer who is arrested and is being interviewed by the police for having been found with a dead body in arms on a London rooftop. Ultimately, Imran Mahmood tells us, the story is a “ticking clock mystery…it’s a question of whether she can persuade them that it wasn’t her”.
Having given the premise of the story, Mark Forrest asks Imran, “There are two men, very important in Layla's life. You have her husband, Russell, and then this mysterious stranger called Michael, who keeps appearing randomly in Layla's life. What can the reader know at this point about those two?”
“So, Russell is Layla's husband. And in fact, it's his building on which she is found with the dead woman in her arms. And so that's the connection. That's what's connecting her really to the crime…And then there's this mystery man Michael, who turns up and what he's telling Layla, contrary to what she's always believed, there are forces operating beyond her… And, one of the things Michael is desperate to tell her is that there is no such thing as free will, and that whatever she wants to do about it, there's no avoiding what's coming to what's coming for everyone. And so, in fact, that was one of the things I want to explore in the book was this issue of free will”.
Developing on this idea, Imran tells us “the more I started to read about free will, the more terrified I became. Because it turns out that the physicists, the clever people like Stephen Hawking, and the quantum physicists, the scientists, and the philosophers, very many of them think that we don't have any free will, and it's just an illusion”.
Exploring this concept, Mark asks “Having done your research, Jim, where are you on this question?”
Imran replies, “… scientists have really tucked it up very neatly, because that is although we feel as though we are exercising agency, and that we are in control of what we do, that's really just your brain giving you the illusion that you were in control, because if you didn't have that illusion, then you'd be very depressed indeed…There was a lovely quote, I think, by Jawaharlal Nehru, who said, ‘Fate is like a hand of cards that you’re dealt, and you can't alter that. You can't alter fate. But, how you play the cards is free will. And, I think, if I had to choose, I’m going to come down on the side of Nehru”.
On this theme, Mark ponders, “So, if Layla, where the position she finds herself in, in the interrogation room, she hasn't really been able to do a lot about that. Clearly, the way in which she answers the questions is her playing the cards so that if you like her free will, this interrogation of Layla by these two policemen with her solicitor alongside. I'm guessing this has to be pretty authentic. How familiar are you in your other life as a barrister, not a solicitor with that procedure?”
“Oh, well, I have read in my life and listened to hundreds, if not thousands of police interviews", Imran replies. "And I've always found really fascinating. And it's not necessarily because they're always dealing with matters as or always dealing with really interesting or complex crimes. It's because you because the focus is so intense. There's there are two players in the game and usually, the one asking the questions, the one answering the questions… you are mesmerised by this exchange because you know what they're trying to do. You know, the police are trying to get them. And. we know that he is trying to get to the police, whether for truthful reasons or not. So, it's always been fascinating, this kind of pitting of wits and the and a lot of times the police are holding more of the cards, particularly if the defendant is innocent”.
Having grown up in Liverpool during the late 1970s, and early 1980s, Imran recalls the levels of societal unrest at the time: poor state education, disruptions due to widespread striking and rioting. Despite this, Imran highlights that he was lucky enough to have a teacher who had spotted Imran’s potential and encouraged him to become a barrister. After having become a criminal law barrister, Imran was inspired to write his debut novel You Don’t Know Me, the story of a young man who was completing his closing speech.
Considering his career so far, Mark asks, “So, why the urge to have a second career as a novelist?”
Imran remarks, “Well, the great thing about doing a jury trial is that you can leave the decisions to the jury. And, at the end of the day, you present your case and they will decide whether it's guilty or not guilty. And, nobody comes to me afterwards and says, ‘What do you think?’, because I would usually say that, ‘Well, it's up to you. You've heard the evidence. But, what I can't do is control the ending, and I can't control how dark the material gets when I'm doing a real case. But, if I'm writing fiction, I can control the ending. I know exactly what's going to happen. I know how deep to go, how dark to go. And, I can always get myself that -there are times doing the criminal work and I can get so tough on that kind of mental health.”
Finally, Marks asks Imran, “And, so you have your first novel, You Don't Know Me, made into an acclaimed telly series. It's such a big deal. I mean, how did that even come about?”
Chuckling, Imran says “God knows - because it feels like a total fluke! So, what happened was that my literary agent had sent out the book to some film people. And, one of the people at Slow Down who ends up making it read it that night and had stayed up reading the manuscript and then phoned me up and said, ‘Can you come and meet me?’
So, I went to meet them at that place and they spent 20 minutes trying to say, trying to convince me to allow them to make it, whereas I couldn't believe that they wanted to make sure they were firmly pushing an open door and they were saying, ‘Well, this is why we want to make it, and I'm just not going away in the way you want me to say yes’. And so, I just sat back and allowed it all to happen. That big smile on my face”.