Escape: The Past by 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.