David McMillan was held in the ‘Bangkok Hilton’ aka the Klong Prem prison in Thailand awaiting trial on drug charges in the mid-90s for almost two years. There were 600 foreigners among the 12,000 inmates of this walled prison city also waiting to rot inside. If his trial had ended the way most local trials do, he might still be there today, for sentences ranging between 30 and 99 years.
Before his trial ended, McMillan managed to escape, becoming the first Westerner to successfully break out of Klong Prem, a feat no one has yet repeated.
Escape is not the usual, confessional my-life-in-hell story by the author. Firstly, McMillan makes no excuses for his life as a drug smuggler. Emotional responses to the good, the bad and the ugly in the 12,000-strong prison complex are reported through the reactions of the 50 or more fellow inmates who McMillan describes as he relentlessly pursues his search for the perfect escape plan.
Secondly, the circumstances of how McMillan came to be arrested in Chinatown and why so many agencies are set against him are revealed in the style of a thriller. Despite the author appearing often cold and ruthless, readers would not help rooting for him as both accomplices and plans fall away.
Stories of the drug world and its grubby inhabitants are common but real-life prison escapes are rare. It is also a story of loyalty and friendship; of human stamina for survival and the desire to be free.
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, McMillan would have never managed the jailbreak.
Like some of the thrillers on human feats breaking new records, Escape takes you into a strange but compelling world, a world that reveals the indomitable spirit of the human kind and a world that showcases the best and worst of what a desperate man can do.
Supporting characters are surprisingly varied for the confined space: there are Eddie the junkie-courier from Switzerland, Chang the Taiwanese cook, Kelvin the sorrowful Hawaiian, Rick the conniving English bar owner, yet also Germans pretending to be barons, Nigerians actually princes, young clubbers, jaded Americans, mysterious Chinese and an anarchist-scientist serving 50 years for being the translator on a Canadian drug deal. As well as a motley collection of languishing Australians, surreally presented at a real embassy Christmas party inside the prison grounds.