- ISBN13: 9789810575687
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Among the 600 foreigners jailed in the ‘Bangkok Hilton’, one man resolves to do what no other has done: Escape. This is the true story of drug smuggler David McMillan’s perilous break-out from Thailand’s most notorious prison. After more than a year in prison and two weeks before a near-certain death sentence, McMillan escapes, never to be seen in Thailand again…. More >>
Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand’s Bangkok Hilton
3 Responses to “Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand’s Bangkok Hilton”
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 The Crying of Lot 49 (Perennial Fiction Library) 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
Rating: 5 / 5
I was in the Bangkok Hilton before he arrived.The only way out was from the hospital section, which was the last wall that McMillan scaled. To get to the wall, he had to swim through a 15 foot wide sewage trench just to get to the ground barbed wire that blocked the wall. I didn’t even give it a thought – it was impossible to get to the 25 foot high wall manned by sharpshooters with M-16s. I’m totally amazed that he pulled it off! Escaping from Alcatraz Island seems to be a much easier task.
Rating: 5 / 5
Most of us might pass by gut-wrenching stories of prison escapes, but this true prison break story breaks the mold. It is really a story of loyalty and friendship.
Without McMillan’s passionate girlfriend and his enduring friends he would have never managed the near-impossible jailbreak. Every chapter left me wanting more, and as ever, the truth is stranger than fiction.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail
Rating: 4 / 5