Escape: The Past
‘Living Fast’ Redefined As Bangkok Hilton Escapee
David Mcmillan Opens His Past As A Teenage Drug-Trafficker
David McMillan
In this gripping prequel to ‘Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand’s Bangkok Hilton’, drug smuggler-turned-bestselling author David McMillan tells it from the beginning. Throwing away an expensive education as a teenager then a promising executive career, McMillan hits rock bottom only to shake off the dust from the dirt-floor warehouse that was his home to make his first million dealing drugs before he turned 21.
McMillan details his incredible plans to smuggle two tonnes of marijuana from northern Thailand by Learjet, befriend drug-dealing pimps in fishbowl brothels in Bangkok, rig cockfights in Manila with disgraced British peer Lord Moynihan and even transport liquid heroin in a transparent glass statue. Learn the tricks of the smuggling trade as McMillan arms himself and his teams of couriers with dozens of passports and custom-built machines that frustrate border guards for years.
Success for McMillan comes at a heavy price as he builds up smuggling rings around the world only to see them repeatedly destroyed. While this true survivor overcomes prison time in half a dozen countries on four continents, the true cost is the lives of almost everyone he holds close.
Soon enough the highlife of cash millions, glitzy apartments and commuting by Concorde is shattered as the law catches up with the urban-cool trafficker in Australia. Despite eleven years jail, and release under heavy surveillance, McMillan returns to the only world he knows: the smuggler’s trail. Ahead lie shiploads of marijuana from Colombia, the opium fields of Afghanistan and death row in both Karachi and Bangkok.
David McMillan was once one of Australia's most notorious drug
traffickers. He began his drug-smuggling career following a trip to India in his twenties; it was a vocation that would see him
mastermind a heroin-smuggling syndicate worth millions of dollars and plan numerous escape attempts from prisons around the world.
He was ruined in the 1980s by a major arrest, the death of his wife and a long prison sentence. While on remand he was charged with
attempting to escape by helicopter using SAS personnel. Following his arrest in Thailand and subsequent infamous escape from Klong
Prem maximum security prison, David continued to undertake risky adventures until retiring to London in the late 1990s, where he now lives.
Praise for "Escape: the true story of the first Westerner ever to break out of the Bangkok Hilton"
“Once McMillan puts his daring plan into place, the action rips along like a thriller . . . breathtaking stuff” News of the World, UK
“Gripping” Zoo Weekly, UK
“This is one of the world’s most notorious—and remarkable—heroin traffickers: Melbourne man David McMillan. Despite still being on the run, McMillan has written a book, Escape, about … his amazing breakout in Bangkok” The Australian
“The jailbreak was straight out of a movie” The Age, Australia
“The book is exceptionally well written … Escape begs to be made into a movie” Pattaya Mail, Thailand
“Reads better than any thriller” Stephen Leather, bestselling author of Private Dancer, Soft Target and Cold Kill
“Drug trafficker David McMillan … spent two years plotting his escape from a Bangkok jail” BBC
“Inmates at HMP Erlestoke near Devizes, Wilts [UK], can borrow books from a catalogue including Escape by David McMillan, which describes how he broke out of Thailand’s ‘Bangkok Hilton’ prison” The Telegraph, UK
“In the style of Howard Marks—the international drug dealer who became a best-selling author—McMillan is touting a book about his prison escapades. The book, entitled Escape, is selling well in Asia” London Evening Standard, UK
“David McMIllan is better known as ‘the only Westerner to have escaped the notorious Bangkok Hilton’ … his story, Escape, has been selling well throughout Southeast Asia” The Nation, Thailand
