I saw it. He smothered her, pressing his hands on her face. The police don’t believe me, they say it’s impossible – but I know what I saw.
This is Xander Shute: once a wealthy banker, now living on the streets.
As he shelters for the night in an empty Mayfair flat, he hears its occupants returning home, and scrambles to hide as the couple argue. Trapped in his hiding place, he soon finds himself witnessing a vicious murder.
But who was the dead woman, who the police later tell him can’t have been there? And why is the man Xander saw her with evading justice?
As Xander searches for answers, his memory of the crime comes under scrutiny, forcing him to confront his long-buried past and the stories he’s told about himself.
How much he is willing to risk to understand the brutal truth?
It was hard to imagine that Imran Mahmood could come up with a novel to match the intensity and grit of You Don’t Know Me, but here it is – whilst I Know What I Saw is a very different concept, the sheer quality of the plotting stands out, it is an immersive and often highly emotional story that grips from first page to last.
Xander lives on the streets, fighting his own personal demons daily. The reader immediately gets a sense for this man and the struggles of a transient life, so are with him all the way. When he witnesses a murder the police cannot confirm and ends up in hot water himself so begins a twisty, addictive journey towards the truth of things.
I loved it. I didn’t want to put it down until I knew what happened, or more specifically whether Xander would come out of this ok. The sprawling, disconnected feel of the character’s thought process and actions holds you within the pages until the clever, emotionally charged finale.
With a unique writing style and a very human based imagination, I would say Imran Mahmood is an author to watch long term. Really very good indeed.
Recommended.
You can purchase I Know What I Saw (Raven) Here.
Happy reading!
That sounds fantastic, a real sense of the relationship between reader and narrator is not easy to Foster. This has jumped into my book lists Liz