They say we all have a calling – one thing that we’re all ‘meant’ to do. Well, in the case of Imran Mahmood, he has AT LEAST two, and they both involve one particular thing – crime; on top of being a screen-writer, he’s a criminal barrister and an author. Mahmood is currently riding a new wave of reader and critical acclaim following the release of his second novel, I Know What I Saw, earlier this month and PopWrapped caught up with him to talk handling the pressure of working in such demanding, high-profile professions and the nicest compliment he’s ever received about his writing.

You’re a criminal barrister and a screenwriter, as well as being an author – how do you find the time to juggle three high pressure jobs? 

I write at every opportunity I get. So for example if my case is in Liverpool and I have a 2 hour train journey ahead of me, I will get out the laptop and write. I’ve also been known to write whilst waiting for verdicts – which can take a day or more to be returned. The important thing I find is to write as consistently as I can. So an hour every day is better for me than ten hours in one day.

How big of a book fan would you say you are, and how might you say that has influenced/impacted your decision to start writing your own works? 

I’m a huge fan of reading fiction. I grew up in a house with very few (ie none!) books so always felt very privileged whenever I had a book in my hand. For a kid growing up in an atmosphere of bullying and racism, books were a real sanctuary. I doubt I would have survived without books like To Kill a Mockingbird because they were like hands reaching out from across the years and continent to offer comfort and wisdom.

Did your work as a barrister particularly influence your decision to start writing crime fiction? At what point did you suddenly think: “I deal with crime every day, now let me work on/look at it from a different perspective?”

Actually, You Don’t Know Me was conceived in the Robing Room at court when I was sitting down to write my closing speech. I stopped and wondered why I was writing this speech and not the defendant. His life experience was what mattered most to the jury not mine. And then I saw that my role was just to act as a bridge between the jury and him and really in writing my speech I was writing his. And that led me to wondering what a speech from a defendant might sound like.

Your debut novel You Don’t Know Me has been championed by world renowned authors including Lee Child – do you ever feel any pressure to perhaps reach their standards of acclaim and popularity in terms of your writing, or are you more just someone who appreciates your work being respected in its own right? 

Other writers, especially the stellar ones like Lee Child, are so generous in their support to newbies that we could never repay them. Lee was very kind about my book and I had the chance to thank him one day. I shook his hand and thanked him and he in characteristically generous fashion simply said; ‘thank you for writing a great book.’

YDKM is also being adapted as a four-part series for BBC One and Netflix with Tom Egan writing and Sarman Masud directing. How excited are you to see your work be brought to life on screen? 

Totally thrilled. It’s a real privilege. Very few books get made into TV and a vanishingly small percentage of those have such amazing talents as Tom Edge and Sam Masud involved in them. The cast is also incredible. I have seen some of the shooting and the acting is exceptional.

Where did the original idea for your new novel, I Know What I Saw, come from? Can you talk me through the writing/creative process? 

I wanted to write the story of an impossible murder in impossible circumstances where the reader was left a bit baffled! The character Xander Shute was part-imagination and part-experiential in that I once met someone who lived on the street who was what could only be described as a genius. I wanted to show if I could that we are all capable of descent – that we are all vulnerable – no matter how secure or privileged we may appear to be on the surface.

While the book obviously focusses heavily on the crime element, what I found really appealing as well was the focus on grief and trauma, and what that can do to a person, in various forms. With mental health and well-being having been a focus for millions of us this past year, perhaps more than ever before, was it always your intention to write a book that addresses that in some way or did it just emerge as you created this central character? 

It had been my wish for some time to write more about mental health. It feels like an invisible presence still in our society. We are claim to be aware of it but many people still act as though poor mental health is an illusion or an excuse or a sign of weakness. I wanted to show that there was no correlation between mental health and, for example, weakness. There isn’t a person on the planet that isn’t vulnerable to it. As long as we are all human we are all capable of being affected or touched by it.

From particularly a legal, but also personal, perspective, how much of crime in society do you think is a result of grief/trauma/subsequent mental health issues? Can the two actually be separate things? 

The only thing we know for certain is that the more privileged and socially secure an individual is the less likely they are to commit crime. Many of the people I represent display symptoms of trauma and poor mental health and almost all of them can trace their criminality to a set of complex causes. People don’t wake up in their Mayfair homes, the scent of their public schools heavy on their skins and go and commit an armed robbery. And mentally healthy people tend not to stand in windows flashing the locals. I believe we need a fresh look at criminality and the metric by which we judge it. We are a supposedly sophisticated society and I think we can do better than criminalising people in such a one-dimensional way as we currently do.

What do you hope readers take from the book as they work through the story? 

That we are all vulnerable to the accident of circumstance. That one man’s privilege can be another’s misfortune. That there but for the grace of God go we all. I’m fascinated by the idea that we can turn a corner and our lives might never be the same again.

Would you like to see this novel be adapted too? If you could put together a dream cast for it, who would you choose? 

I have been lucky enough to have had this book optioned by a great TV production company. The cast we have spoken about is already what I would have described as my dream cast. It’s all a bit top secret for now though but as soon as I can share – I will!

What’s the nicest thing anyone’s said or written about your work? 

While on set at the filming of You Don’t Know Me a young woman working on the production came to me and thanked me for writing black characters that displayed kindness and compassion and didn’t perpetuate the usual stereotypes. She was so grateful and felt so strongly that the adaptation would be a real turning point for young black people in Britain. I was indescribably touched by that. I know she vastly overstated it but I was moved by how excluded from British culture she felt that it took a book to make her feel more connected to it. I haven’t expressed that very well at all. I’m sorry!

Finally then, have you started thinking about book three yet, or are you just waiting to see how the response is to this one? 

Book 3 is completed in draft. It is a murder mystery that is designed to leave you well and truly stumped!

I Know What I Saw is available now. For more information on and to keep up-to-date with Imran Mahmood, follow him on Twitter. Header photo credit: Bill Waters.