Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179938 in Books
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Break Out from a Real Nightmare
Most of us might pass by gut-wrenching stories of prison escapes, but this true prison break story breaks the mould. It is really a story of loyalty and friendship. Readers unimpressed by the credibility stretching fantasy of 'Prison Break' will welcome the hard truth in these pages.
Without the jazz-club chanteuse who flew to Bangkok the moment she saw his arrest flashed on the nightly news, the tireless supporters and his enduring friends David would have never managed the near-impossible jailbreak. Every chapter left me wanting more, and as ever, the truth is stranger than fiction. This book deserves to be moved from the airport racks to the libraries.

Prison Break Opens Door to the Grand Conspiracy
I read this book six months ago and only now begin to see all the links - and I'm no conspiracy-theory nutcase. ESCAPE reads like a racy, often amusing thriller while giving the absolute truth on one of the world's scariest prisons, and fine instructions on how to escape. Yet after re-reading THE UNDERGROUND EMPIRE (the 1980s tome on governments using crooks) the added layers of ESCAPE began to show. There are puzzles, joke names (not unusual when names are changed to protect the guilty), slices of numerology, mathematical sequences and some real poetry concealed in the text (for example, a weather-stained wall described as a colorful mural, followed by lunch: ` ...a dark bROTH CO-mingling with...' my CAPS reveal Rothko); yet it is all true. This man was the only European to break out, and almost everyone he meets on the way appears as though they were meant to pass through like some Zen journey. ESCAPE reads at times like Dashiell Hammett and then an early Thomas Pynchon with revelations from the Illuminati. The feeling of being manipulated as by THE MAGUS. My second thought was the story is some elaborate journalists' practical joke such as Southern/Hoffenberg's CANDY. Those books are all fiction, this is not - the history is in the newspapers, although only the paper archives as the trail goes cold and transforms with the dawn of the internet age. ESCAPE is a book that won't leave you alone. There is more in this book with every reading.

Escape makes Howard Marks' exploits look like Playschool.
When you first pick up Escape you know that you are going to be in for a literary treat. David McMillan skilfully guides his reader through the arduous realities of a pan-continent drug smuggler who suddenly finds himself looking at a death sentence in Thailand's notorious Klong Prem prison.
Escape is, refreshingly, not a diatribe against the harsh Thai justice system. Instead the author offers an incomparable insight into the relationships, wit and fights for survival that occurs day in, day out in such hell holes. The truly amazing thing however is that amongst all of the hopelessness, despair and madness going on within the prison walls, McMillan manages to prepare, plan and execute an audacious escape which, against all odds, he gets away with.
Having read many other books in this genre I have no hesitation in recommending Escape to other readers who will find this authors style to be both hugely amusing and non-egocentric. The only criticism that I have of David McMillan is that he hasn't published a sequel yet!