Cut-Throat

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 7 years of his 28-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 it public, it 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? So important, in fact, that even the Home Secretary, David Blunkett MP, was compelled to order a report, much of which still remains secret to this day.The Roddy McLean Story is a truly unique account of his life, death - and the aftermath of both - told in the first-person using material from McLean's diary. Whether as a mercenary in the Congo, an armed robber in Newcastle or an international drug smuggler and gun runner, McLean will take you through his life as he struggles against the darkest realms of humanity - and himself - right until the very end; an end which overshadows the greatest secret of all - not of how he died, but of how he lived.