All I Said Was True

Imran Mahmood opens his latest crime novel All I Said Was True with quotations about free will. The anonymous one, ‘I didn’t choose to have free will,’ illustrates the turmoil in the mind of the leading character, who is a lawyer suspected of murder. Mahmood specialises in unreliable narrators, and in my opinion Layla Mahoney is his most gut-twistingly complex protagonist so far. In view of her profession, the reader expects Layla to approach her desperate situation in a logical way. Instead she blames a stranger called Michael for the stabbing, describing him as ‘...a thing with a hundred faces’. The police check out the scanty information she gives them, but they cannot find any proof Michael exists. That’s when the reader begins to suspect Layla is lying. Doubts about her honesty become even stronger when she is suspended from her job.

At this point the plot shows signs of becoming a police procedural, but as it turns out there is nothing methodical or conventional about Layla’s narrative. With only forty-eight hours to convince the police of her innocence, she sets out to find the mysterious Michael. The way their paths cross is almost supernatural, which makes it even more difficult to know who is telling the truth. Also, Layla seems to be unable to accept that whatever happens, the trauma she is suffering means her relationship with her adored husband Russell is bound to change. At the same time, her mother is ill and issues arising from her father’s desertion of the family are coming to a head. In the midst of trauma, she becomes oddly obsessed with a tiny defect in her kitchen and wreaks havoc with her attempts to fix it. Is she reacting to the pressure she is under, or is guilt wearing her down?

Mahmood’s skilfully woven tale, about the choices we make and how responsible we are for our actions, grabbed my attention on page one and held it until the end.





All I Said Was True