Cut-throat: The Vicious World of Rod McLean Fact is often stranger than fiction - and when escaped drug baron and MI5 agent Roddy McLean was mysteriously found dead in a London flat after two months on the run, even Hollywood couldn't have scripted it better. McLean had only served seven years of his twenty-eight-year sentence, following a 1996 sting operation off the Caithness coast in which a Customs officer lost his life. Described as one of the most ruthless and important figures on the country's drug scene, McLean had found his security status downgraded from Category A to D and had been transferred to HMP Leyhill, an open prison which had seen 82 prisoners escape in 2002 alone. Only four days after the media had accused the security services of helping him to escape, McLean's body was found. But not only did it take the Metropolitan Police 29 days to make this news public, it also took them that long to inform Avon and Somerset - the very police force who were still trying to recapture him. Why? Who was McLean and what made him so important? Cut-Throat is a riveting account of Rod McLean's life and death - and the aftermath of both. Wayne Thallon is Rod McLean's nephew and is an ex-civil servant and criminology graduate. He is now a full-time writer and divides his time between Edinburgh and Washington DC. I love books like this
