A young man is accused of murder and this book is his closing speech to the jury. Such an unusual way to tell a story and I loved it! It gives an insight into gangs and how easy it is to judge someone without knowing them. The accused decides to go through the eight pieces of evidence one by one in a bid to prove his innocence.

I would love to read more from this author if this book is anything to go by, because it was such a thought-provoking book and one that I finished in under a day.

5 solid stars from me.

A story of gangs, drugs, murder & ultimately love, covering real social issues.
You Don't Know Me sees an unnamed man in the closing days of his trial for murder.
Over 10 days he tells his truth, from start to finish, nothing is left out. Even incriminating himself in other crimes to prove his innocence in this one.
A brilliantly written, thought-provoking book.. If I could give it more than 5 stars I would.

A very unusual book but cleverly written. I've never read anything like this before. Well worth reading

The premise is interesting - a convicted murderer fighting for his innocence as he sacks his counsel and gives the closing argument himself. I expected to like it, but having got 20% through (and that took 2 weeks!) I found the narrative annoying (written in the first person by the main protagonist ) and struggled to want to pick it up and carry on. So with regret I've put it down for good (there are simply too many other good books to be read without worrying about finishing something that you're just not enjoying).

Wasn't too sure about this when i started off but quickly got drawn in, although i had figured out the twist in the tale well before the end, interesting concept though...

I just really couldn't get into this book. The idea was great but for me it just didn't work with all the gangster references.

Making the reader part of the jury is an interesting concept for this enjoyable book. The story unfolds from the voice of the accused, standing in the dock and conducting his own defence. The story is filled with other players, some very memorable. The story twists around and gradually the layers are revealed. I really enjoyed this book and would have gone with a not guilty verdict.

To me, the style of this book is very impressive. It's very different from the majority of books I've read before and I like the fact Mahmood gives the narrator his own voice, a voice anybody from London can relate to. I feel the book addresses a very serious problem in society, especially within London and therefore it is a unique and impressive novel. However, I wasn't impressed by the story as such. I failed to connect to any of the characters, the twist (whilst unexpected) wasn't shocking and I just never really got into the story itself - in the end it was quite boring and drawn out. One thing I like is the fact the author leaves the verdict up to you, the reader - a nice touch.

Five stars doesn't do it justice. I can't come up with enough superlatives it's just fantastic!! I was simply hooked from the first word. I was close to tears & then laughing out loud a moment later. Probably my most constant emotion was frustration... with the lives wasted by the situation people find themselves born into. Not without hope though if as I am sure such intelligence gets a voice but please read it and get your friends to read it. I can so see a film being made of it too.

I chose to read You Don’t Know Me because I liked the sound of it when I read the blurb. When I first started reading it I thought I was going to hate it. As I continued to read it though I realised that I was enjoying reading it and that what I was feeling at the beginning was not hate. This book took me right outside of my comfort zone and placed me smack bang in the middle of a world where drugs, prostitution and gang violence are so commonplace that they have become the norm.
Imran Mahmood tells the story of an unnamed defendant up for murder charges after the shooting of a young boy. The night before closing speeches the defendant decides to sack his lawyer and present his own closing speech and his own truth.
He states that the story his lawyer presented was one that based on half-truths and what he considered to be believable, the ‘plausible story.’ The speech he gives is long and rambling and often takes the reader on seemingly unrelated routes but this is one of the strengths of the book. It turns the protagonist from a seemingly hostile stranger to someone you can empathise with.
The defendant explains he had a dilemma. Do I let him speak to you in your language but telling only half the story, or do I do it myself and tell the full story with the risk that you won’t understand none of it?
The evidence against him is strong but he states he can explain it all. He knows that the jury have a certain idea of him right now but that idea probably isn’t accurate. Maybe you need to get to know me first. The real me.
“They want you to think I’m a no brain lazy kid who go into some random street and shoot a next man up for nothing. Don’t be fooled though.”
He claims he is innocent and if they just listen to him maybe he can prove it.
He acknowledges that he knew the deceased boy, Jamil, and what the prosecutor failed to mention is that he was a gang member and a drug dealer.
The defendant, on the other hand, claims to have had legitimate employment in a garage and managed to sidestep the gang life. Not an easy feat.
“If you got some kills and you can handle yourself, like I could, you might be okay. But what if you aint? You got no choices. It’s either take a beating or you join a gang and get paid and get respect. And then it just becomes a part of your life. It becomes a normal thing for a kid to sell drugs in school. It becomes a normal thing for a kid to stab up some next kid for no reason. And once it’s normal for you, you don’t have any reasons to change it. It just becomes life. Your life.”
The defendant brings the reader deep into his world and though the ending left me dissatisfied I can’t say this book wasn’t an enjoyable read.

I really really liked the concept. The idea of a young black man feeling so badly represented by the legal profession that he stood to give his own closing speech at his murder trial.
It gave the book and the narrative a structure.
However without a second voice, or told from third person, or any other transcripts after 400 pages it lost the power of that being the voice to me. It became a 1st person told story and not a terrified young man fighting for his life in front of the jury.

As such for a chunk of the book my interest levels dropped a bit but were restored by the end.

The bit that brought it back was the authors notes at the back.

"A disproportionate number of young, socially disadvantaged, men from BAME backgrounds find themselves caught up in the system"
The same could be said in reverse for the publishing and bookselling industry at times and so I feel really passionately that books like this should be heard and published and sold to as wide an audience as possible.

More authors and subject matters like this please publishers. It's important.

I thoroughly enjoyed the unique way this book was written with just one voice leading the reader through the story. I felt the ending wasn't as strong as I would have anticipated and therefore not a 5 star read but a very clever well crafted book

Different and absorbing. read it in two sittings as I just had to see what the jury decided! Very thought provoking especially as knife crime is on the increase, this shows you how and perhaps why.

You Don't Know Me is a crime novel with a difference, not only is it from the defendant rather than the victim's perspective, but we also never know the name of our perpetrator. On trial for murder he sacks his lawyer just before the closing speeches and decides to deliver his own defence.

In a sense we the reader, are an additional member of the jury, but we hear none of the preceding trial evidence, hear no witness statements, no cross examination. All we have is the defendant's word.

As he talks through the evidence that has been previously presented we are allowed an insight into this young mans life. His upbringing, his family and friends, and the path that led him to be tried for Murder.

Gangs and criminals in London may not be anything new, but to delve into them in the depths that this novel does, from the perspective of this nameless character certainly is. And it works. Sure, it may put us into a world in which we are unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but as the defendant argues, we don't always get to chose what happens to us.

His is a convincing argument, whether it is convincing enough, well sadly the jury is still out on that one. And there lies my one and only frustration with this novel is that we don't learn the outcome of the trial. I understand that this is deliberate, that we are supposed to make our own decisions, but it would have been interesting to get the authors perspective.

You Don't Know Me is a brave and clever debut novel that is sure to have you gripped. The voice of the defendant is raw and gritty as he appeals to the jury to believe his story, but you will want to know who he is and if you can trust him to tell you the truth. Do we know him at all, is he guilt-free? Or is he just another murderer trying to convince himself and the jury of his false innocence?

Guilty or not guilty? That is up to you to decide because in this book you are the jury. You get to listen to what the defendant has to say and based on that you can make your decision.

"That's how I see it. You pay for your own."

I found the premise of this book fascinating. The fact that the author doesn't direct you in anyway to whether he is or isn't guilty you have to make that decision all by yourself.

"She needed her books round her. To her they were like her friends. Or family even. It's weird I know, but book people are weird, trust me."

I hbave rated this book three stars because it is the first of its kind that I have read and I believe that it was executed well. However it only gets three stars because I found it hard going at times and as you can see it's taken me nearly a month to read. This is however not a bad read and I found it interesting.

"Like I always said, you got to pay for your shit one way or another. No one needs to walk away free of charge."

Did he do it? The author has managed to create the courtroom scene bringing the reader into the action as the jury member. A cleverly crafted story where the defendant is our storyteller reliving the scenes that lead to the crime. This was a totally new concept to me but was a most enjoyable read although I found it difficult to warm to the main character but not his friends. Guilty? The jury is still out!!

A good read, interesting characters with a thought provoking climax

A defendant takes the stand to give his closing speech, his lawyer unable or unwilling to proceed under his client’s instruction. What happens next is one of the most unusual, and thought provoking crime fiction reads that I have come across in a long time.
The defendant starts by stating that his lawyer had asked him to leave some parts of the story out, as the truth can be too difficult to explain or perhaps just too far away from the jurors who will have to decide whether the eight pieces of evidence that the prosecution have presented have raised the bar too far for reasonable doubt to win the day.
The narrative structure of this book is without break one young man’s description of his counter claims against the crucial pieces of evidence presented and as such it is incredibly powerful but also at times a difficult one to pull off; this is not a short book and I am unused to one voice without interruption, but on balance this difference is one of the things that will make me remember this book long after I have read and forgotten many others.
From my point of view, and as the book is presented, I was one of the jurors listening to a young man who lives a life unlike the one he does, and has all of his life, and that was obviously part of the point. I was there to judge with complete with ignorance about gangs and the way that those who live in areas controlled by them are powerless to stay completely clear of their influence, even if they don’t join the gang itself, which I’m very glad to say our defendant hadn’t. The book starts off with quite a lot of street vernacular, which sets the scene but the usage of this decreases as the speech continues, just used enough to remind the reader that you are listening to a young man who is fighting for his freedom, against what he sees as an injustice.
I have to admit this book got to me. Not only did I learn something about stuff I only see on the news, which was both skilfully presented without at all glorifying gangs, but perhaps explaining a little about a world that thankfully hasn’t touched my life. You Don’t Know Me also gave an insight into how the way a story is presented, how much you buy into that story depends on how believable each of its elements is. That said I very much doubt that any judge would have allowed this speech on length and the mass introduction of new evidence, but that didn’t in anyway detract from the gripping nature of the narrative. The world as many of us know, is made up of shades of grey and I was interested to see how much towards the black shades I was willing to go before I said ‘enough,’ and the answer was further than I would have expected before I started reading this one.
A superb debut with much to think about and as such this would make an unusual book club read, but one that I’m sure would provide a lively debate, not only about the content itself but the way the story is presented.
I’m very grateful to Penguin UK for allowing me to read an ARC of this unique crime fiction novel. This unbiased review is my thanks to them.

The premise of this book really drew me in! The idea that someone would fire their lawyer before closing arguments in their murder trial and decide to give their own interested me. There are so many aspects of the criminal justice system that I have issues with that I thought a book about a defendant speaking out for themselves was something right up my alley.

We are immediately introduced to the defendant who remains unnamed the entire book. I thought I'd have a problem with this because I worried I might not connect or be able to picture him in my head without a name but that really wasn't the case at all. His voice and personality immediately struck me as realistic and pulled me into his story. He has decided he wants to tell the whole truth and nothing but...this is against the advice of his lawyer who seems to believe the truth will hurt his case. The defendant lays out the 8 key pieces of evidence against him and proceeds to go over each one explaining, in great detail and backstory for many, the "truth" behind the supposed evidence.

As he begins detailing the pieces of evidence we begin to get a feel for his life and what led to his currently being charged with murder. What we hear includes racism, poverty, drugs, girlfriends, and quite a bit of dealings with gangs and the gang subculture. The defendant speaks using colloquial language and lots of urban street slang which on the one hand made him feel like an authentic character but on the other hand it started to make me wish I could hear from someone else. Which doesn't happen. The entire book is told in the first person and we only hear from the defendant. While initially I enjoyed this narrative structure, by about 35% into the story I felt myself becoming slightly annoyed with the constant, repetitive use of certain words like "innit" and the very detailed backstories started to bore me quite honestly. As the story went on, I found my mind wandering and I started skimming which is never a good sign.

Overall, this story started off so strong for me but lost steam by the halfway point and I never regained my interest. And the ending....not at all what I expected...don't get me started on that! What I'll say is that the author took a great risk with this narrative structure and story which I appreciate and while it didn't work for me, I'm very much in the minority because there are many highly rated reviews on Goodreads. If you're looking for a uniquely told story you might want to give this a try.

‘You Don't Know Me’ is Imran Mahmood’s, debut novel. He has worked for over two decades at the criminal bar in London and has in that time regularly appeared at jury trials across the country. He has pondered long and hard about the truths and untruths told in court. Can you really know what the truth is and what separates the verdicts of guilty and not guilty? These ponderings have been freely expressed in this novel – a courtroom drama - where an unnamed defendant charged with murder, has seen his trial through and on the very eve of the summing up speeches by the defence and the prosecuting counsels, he decides to sack his silk and sum up the case himself.
He tells the jury that in order for them to decide upon the verdict, he believes he should place his faith in telling the whole truth of how he has come to the situation of being on trial. He disagrees with his representatives’ advice, because he feels that he has been coerced into keeping some pertinent facts hidden, albeit for his own good. He truly believes the twelve jurors must get to really know him in order to understand the background of the charges made against him and about his willingness to place his trust in their integrity once they know him and the complete unadulterated truth.
Thereby starts his long, desperate and sometimes rambling rendition of why he is before a jury in a criminal court. It’s a journey into gangland, rivalry, domination, drug dealing, amorality and criminality. It’s dark, it’s unpleasant and it does not make for an easy read from your comfortable armchair in the cosy ambience of your safe place; your home. But this anonymous defendant feels it is his only chance of survival. It’s a seedy, weird tale of plots and counterplots as this man takes us through each piece of evidence one by one. He swears, he implicates himself in criminal behaviour, but throughout it all he swears that he is not guilty of the murder of JC. It’s audacious, perhaps even foolhardy – but here’s the crux of the matter: the jury is the reader, and after the speech ends after ten long days, so does the story. You, the reader, decide upon the verdict.
I would like to thank NetGalley and publisher Penguin for my copy of this novel, sent to me in return for an honest review. Once I had read the blurb I was intrigued and excited about the original idea and felt that I couldn’t miss out on reading this debut novel. However, it didn’t altogether gel with me as I read on. I thought the lengthy monologue would have benefited from some guidance from the judge: warnings even. Unbroken as it was and with only periods of respite for short adjournments, I felt quite wearied by the sheer volume of information, excuses, unsavoury characters and criminal acts that were used in support of the accused’s arguments. I didn’t like the ending; the vast nothing after the speeches were over. I wanted a conclusion as in a real courtroom drama to make the voice more authentic, even a judge’s direction and advice as to the reaching of the verdict. I liked the premise for the novel but it just didn’t work as well as I’d hoped it would.