The most recommended books about prison escapes

It is a truism that Science Fiction dates itself. SF stories that were written only a few years previous often fail to foresee technological innovations ̶ cell phones, GPS, gene-splicing ̶ that seem obvious and inevitable to hindsight-blessed present-day readers. Those disconcerted by such, let us call them “backwards anachronisms,” should find Quantum Thief a welcome relief for decades to come, because the novel is set so far in the future that hi-tech things like, say, cell phones seem quaint curios out of far-distant days of yore. Long-distance communications in Quantum Thief are effected by something more like telepathy (although the word is never used).

“Quantum” is the operative term in this novel, make no mistake.

Be forewarned: Quantum Thief is chock-full of coined terminology. But have no fear. You have a choice. Either use the online glossary - or you can just read for the story and absorb the… show more.

An exquisite novel, Doig’s The Sea Runners combines the suspense and drama of a great escape with lovely, spare descriptions of the Northwest Coast’s sea, wind, and space.

Based on an account of three men who survived a coastal canoe voyage from indentureship in Russian Alaska during the winter of 1852, it is a remarkable story of the human spirit versus inhuman elements.  

Elmore Leonard was the first crime author I ever read, and his books are what got me hooked on the genre.

Like many of his characters, Jack Foley, despite being a criminal, in this case a bank robber, is just so much fun to spend time with and read about.

The book starts with Foley escaping from prison only to find himself bundled into the trunk of a car with a female US marshal. What follows is a cat-and-mouse, cops and robbers tale, as only Elmore Leonard could have written it.

Fabulous characters, amazing situations, and some of the coolest dialogue in all of fiction. The film was great, but the book is even better.

Read it and you’ll want to read everything else he ever wrote.

I love this, first and foremost, for the main character, i.e. Sunshine. It's a character-driven book, and Rae/Sunshine reached out and grabbed me from the first with her determination to share all about her love of baking (Cinnamon rolls as big as your head!) and her humor in the face of vampires and other icky squicky darkness.

I appreciate how she thinks through situations, leading me in circles and squiggly lines to her conclusions. I love how much she loves her family, mother, stepfather, annoying brothers, and, of course, her grandmother. I also love the layers and how Sunshine sees new nuances in earlier events/developments.

And, of course, it doesn't hurt that Sunshine has a quirky sense of humor about her baking and how much most of the characters love her baking almost as much as she does.

With very few words, this story shows the importance of helping others. Life in the chicken coop is safe and predictable. Until one day the capybaras show up. They are large and noisy and the chickens were not expecting them and don’t really want to share their coop with them. But it’s hunting season and so the chickens allow them to stay. The adults stay away from each other but two little ones make friends and one even saves the other one’s life. Suddenly having strangers live among them, is good rather than bad. A beautiful tale with many undercurrents…

This is the sequel to They Met in a Tavern, and I didn’t know how Menchaca would top the first one, but he managed it with flying colors.

The characters in this novel are divine- both heroes and villains compliment one another so beautifully you really can’t imagine the world where one existed without the other. I loved his portrayal of his female characters; he gives them such depth, and I particularly loved his character, Wings.

It’s not often in fantasy that a character who is a mother and wife is given any form of personality, and Menchaca gives her such vibrancy, power, and agency it was an absolute breath of fresh air.

I also loved the funnier moments in this novel. There is a lot of plot, a lot of characters, and a lot of action, so it ran the risk of getting bogged down, but the moments… show more.

Stephen Hunter’s crime fiction masterpiece, Dirty White Boys, begins with a sentence lovingly detailing the villain’s genitals. 

I assure you this opening is in no way gratuitous or prurient; it signals that we’re in for a wild ride, informing us that only “…three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye….” 

Pye is one of the great literary villains of all time – racist, crude, violent, and cruel… and smart as a whip. And the tone here is pitch-dark hillbilly noir. If you’re brave enough to read this book it will live in your imagination for the rest of your life. 

I am sure that the authenticity of someone who has ‘been there and done it’ is unchallengeable. Airey Neave, who tragically died in 1979 at the hands of the Irish National Liberation Army, was one such. After successfully escaping from the PoW camp at Colditz, he joined MI9, the War Office section that supported escaping PoWs and downed aircrew. This strikes a chord with me as a former pilot. In this book, he tells the stories of French men and women of all ages and backgrounds, who, at great personal danger, formed the backbone of secret escape lines. The narrative is not over-dramatised and the matter-of-fact style is one I respect, but the courage of those who harboured escapees or acted as couriers comes through clearly. 

My new book features the classic “book within a book” trope as a key plot mechanic, but I think Moxon is going for the gold medal in the category of “books within books within books,” with multiple competing characters claiming to be authors and demonstrating unnatural control over their domains, while bemused but frequently baffled readers attempt to decipher what nested reality is foregrounded and what the hell it all means regardless.

It starts off as a spiritual quest for inner-city redemption, starring the inmates of a forgotten asylum and the local parish that tries to tend to them; then an inmate reveals a deeper story of solipsistic villainy that blows away their current problems, and then at least one if not multiple authors involved throws all the cards up in the air and reshuffles them into a multiverse-spanning road movie.

All this, plus the prose is dense and thoughtful… show more.

I expected to be swept away by this book in the way most psychological thrillers impact me–my heart quickening with the pace, my chest aching for resolution, and a rush of relief when the novel ends, followed by a craving for more. That happened. Sure. But the twist in this book comes in the middle of the book with a buildup of suspense and a major resolution that satisfied all my expectations of a thriller.

After that, the novel thrust me into a whole new reading experience, almost another genre, one marked by a different kind of intensity and suspense. Still, it did not feel like two books in one. It felt like one story told through two necessarily different genres. It felt right.