Prison Break: Shantaram to the Bangkok Hilton, The World’s Most Wanted Australians (Allen & Unwin), was released in August 2021.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1980, armed robber Gregory David Roberts abseiled down the front wall of a maximum-security prison in broad daylight. He spent a decade on the run in West Asia before writing his own legend in the bestselling semi-autobiographical novel, Shantaram.

In the late nineties, Melbourne-based drug dealer and gangster David McMillan became the only Australian ever to escape from the so-called ‘Bangkok Hilton’ in Thailand.

And in 1999, armed robber John Killick was airlifted out of a maximum-security prison by his beautiful Russian-born girlfriend – after she hijacked a helicopter with a machine gun.

With unprecedented access to ex-prisoners, prison officers and police, as well as ASIO files and witnesses, Mark Dapin brings to life a hidden criminal world of prison brutality, courage and legend. Prison Break tells the real story behind Australia’s most audacious prison escapes and proves that sometimes the truth is even more compelling than the myth.

Find out more:

Listen to Mark in conversation with Philip Clarke on Nightlife ABC.

Read a review of Prison Break in The Australian (subscription required).

“Dapin introduces an Australian world I scarcely knew or perhaps had just forgotten because I assumed either it wasn’t interesting enough to retain, or because no one had told it so memorably.” – Charles Wooley, “A Who’s Who of Jailbreaks” in The Australian

Buy a copy from Booktopia or your local bookstore.

Audio book available from Audible.