Escape!

ESCAPE! 

(1947 - 1954)

Dramatic Adventure Anthology

Tired of the everyday grind?
Ever dream of a life of … romantic adventure?
Want to get away from it all?
We offer you … ESCAPE!

The famous opening to the show, often worded to suit the events of the moment or season, warns the intrepid radio listener of adventure that is anything but... everyday. Like its sister show on the radio, Suspense, it is considered one of the top shows ever done on radio. Escape takes you on a ride into a world where danger comes in many forms, and you are on the edge of life and death, and perhaps you are being pushed! When Escape says romantic, we're not talking kissing, perhaps those kisses might be from teeming piranha! Escape is more Devil's Island than Fantasy Island. And it is wonderful adventure radio for the whole family, especially Dad.

The best radio actors appeared on the show week in and week out.

Some of the greats associated with the show include William Conrad (Gunsmoke), John Dehner (Have Gun Will Travel), Jack Webb (Dragnet, Jack Webb Collection), Elliott Lewis (Voyage of the Scarlet Queen, Broadway is My Beat), Georgia Ellis (Gunsmoke), Frank Lovejoy (Nightbeat), Hans Conreid, Jennette Nolan, Jay Novello, Jack Edwards, Joan Banks, Parley Baer (Gunsmoke), Paul Frees and Peter Leeds. And that's only a few of the dozens of radio actors who were a part of the greatest high adventure series on radio.

Producer-directors of the show included William N. Robson (Suspense) and Norman McDonald (Gunsmoke), both masters of the craft of radio realism and action adventure, laced with thrills and chills.

Escape's writers (including Ray Bradbury), music and sound effects all wove magic into these half-hour episodes, many of which were based on great writer's tales, such as The Man Who Would be King, Country of the Blind, Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Typhoon, Beau Geste, The Fall of the House of Usher, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and The Time Machine. Some were adapted from high adventure stories written in the 1930s and '40s. Many were written expressly for Escape. There are few clunkers.

All the popular Escape shows are in this fine collection, including "Three Skeleton Key", "Evening Primrose", "The Most Dangerous Game", "A Shipment of Mute Fate", "The Man Who Stole the Bible", "Earth Abides", and "The Loup Garou"...but each and every show is a fine radio drama. This is as nearly perfect as it gets, except, perhaps, that once you get in over your head, you might not... ESCAPE!

What follows is a catalogue of 145 exciting episodes of Escape - more than 72 hours of listening pleasure. Click any of the titles to listen online. Each one links to a detailed description of the episode on the Escape & Suspense website, as well as a free MP3 to download. Then sit back, and... ESCAPE.

1. Action
2. The Adaptive Ultimate 
3. The Adversary
4. Affair at Mandrake 
5. Ambassasor of Poker
6. Ancient Sorceries
7. Back for Christmas
8. Bird of Paradise
9. The Birds
10. Blood Waters
11. Blood Bath
12. The Blue Hotel
13. The Boiling Sea
14. Border Town
15. The Brute
16. A Bullet for Mr. Smith
17. Carnival in Vienna
18. Casting the Runes
19. The Cave
20. Classified Secret
21. Command
22. Confession
23. Conquerer's Isle
24. Conquest
25. The Country of the Blind
26. Crossing Paris
27. Danger at Matecumbe
28. The Dark Wall
29. Dead of Night
30. The Derelict
31. A Diamond as Big as the Ritz
32. Diary of a Madman
33. Dream of Armageddon
34. The Drums of Fore and Aft
35. Earth Abides
36. The Earthmen
37. The Fall of the House of Usher
38. The Far Away Island
39. Figure a Dame
40. Finger of Doom
41. Flood on the Goodwins
42. The Follower
43. Four Went Home
44. The Fourth Man
45. Funeral Fires
46. The Game
47. A Good Thing
48. Green Splotches
49. Gringo
50. Habit
51. The Heart of Kali
52. How Love Came to Professor Guildea
53. I Saw Myself Running
54. Incident in Quito
55. The Invader
56. The Island
57. Jetsam
58. Jimmy Goggles the God
59. John Jack Todd
60. Judegment Day at Cripple Deer
61. The Killer Mine
62. King of Owanatu
63. Leiningen Versus the Ants
64. Letter from Jason
65. Lily and the Colonel
66. The Log
67. Log of the Evening Star
68. The Lost Special
69. Macao
70. The Man Who Could Work Miracles
71. The Man Who Liked Dickens
72. The Man Who Stole the Bible
73. The Man Who Would Be King
74. Maracas
75. The Match
76. The Most Dangerous Game
77. Night in Havana
78. Night of the Guns
79. North of Polaris
80. An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge
81. One Eighth Apache (re-creation)
82. The Open Boat
83. Operation Fleur-de-Lys
84. An Ordinary Man
85. The Outer Limit
86. The Outstation
87. Pagosa
88. Papa Benjamin
89. Pass to Berlin 
90. A Passenger to Bali
91. The Pistol
92. Poison
93. Port Royal
94. Power of Hammer
95. Present Tense
96. Pressure
97. The Price of the Head
98. The Red Forest
99. The Red Mark
100. Red Wine
101. The Return
102. The Rim of Terror
103. Ring of Thoth
104. Roulette
105. The Running Man
106. The Scarlett Plague
107. The Second Class Passenger
108. The Second Shot
109. Seeds of Greed
110. Serenade for a Cobra
111. Seven Hours to Freedom
112. The Shanghai Document
113. Shark Bait
114. A Shipment of Mute Fate
115. A Sleeping Draught
116. Snake Doctor
117. Something for Nothing
118. A Study in Wax
119. Sundown
120. The Sure Thing
121. Taboo
122. The Target
123. The Thirteenth Truck
124. Three Good Witnesses
125. Three Skeleton Key
126. The Time Machine
127. A Tooth for Paul Revere
128. Train from Oebisfelde
129. The Tramp
130. Treasure Incorporated
131. Two and Two Make Four
132. Two Came Back
133. Two if by Sea
134. Typhoon
135. The Untouchable
136. The Vanishing Lady
137. The Vessel of Wrath
138. Violent Night
139. The Voyages of Sinbad
140. When the Man Comes, Follow Him
141. Wild Jack Rhett
142. Wild Oranges
143. Yellow Wake
144. The Young Man with Cream Tarts
145. Zero Hour

My Travel Experiences

Africa

In 1967, when I was just four years old, my parents whisked me away from Montreal to live in Nairobi. I immediately felt at home. As far as I knew, Africa was only down the road. Our new residence, a bungalow built of Njiru bluestone on the crest of a wooded bluff overlooking the Muthari River valley, was straight out of a story book.  

We toured the country exhaustively in our white Peugeot 304, visiting nearly every one of Kenya’s teeming game parks. Watching this magical mystery land unfold, as the car stereo played an eclectic selection of tapes, my infant mind was unable to tell apart what I saw and what I heard, namely lions, giraffes, tangerine trees and marmalade skies. 

Dad loved long road trips, taking us across Uganda, Dahomey, Togo, and Cameroon, as well as the four corners of the countries we lived in: Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania. Nor did he miss an opportunity to stopover on our way back for home leave, sailing the RMS Pendennis Castle from Cape Town to Southampton one year, and touring the sights of Cairo the next. 

By the time I was sixteen I had seen a kaleidoscope of cultures, wildlife, landscapes, and traditions, enough to last a life time. But, alas, I kept moving.

Madagascar was out of this world, a hybrid culture of Asian and African influences, resulting in fascinating animistic rituals, and with a unique flora and fauna unlike anything I’d ever seen. Only its kleptocratic government was familiar.

I was boarding at the American Lutheran Missionary School in Fort Dauphin. With just 32 other students, grades 1 through 12, running around barefoot between a 4-roomed schoolhouse, Mission Children’s Home, post office, and church all surrounded by a white picket fence, it was like were were living in the Little House on the Prairie. 

I left in 1979, but Africa endured in my dreams, under my skin, until I came back six years later to work as a free-lance journalist in Ethiopia. The famine of 1985 opened my eyes to the continent’s woes and profoundly changed my outlook. I was glad for a bit of rest and relaxation when I won second prize in the United Nation’s 40^th anniversary ball raffle at the Addis Hilton: two weeks in the Yemen. Crossing that ancient land was one of my favourite all time journeys.

Another six years would pass before I returned to Africa again, this time as a gorilla conservationist. Subsequently, I would spend the next two decades visiting and working in twenty five national parks in Rwanda, Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Gabon, Cameroon, South Africa, and Uganda where I now reside.

Asia

My experiences were not confined to Africa. During my final year at boarding school my parents moved continents. But I soon found them, living in a leafy suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Moving again was made easier by Ceylon’s island life, but once more I was trying to find new friends and comprehend a powerful new culture. Asia was a constant distraction. There were birdcalls I didn’t recognise, plants I’d never seen before, curious sensations, and fragrances so sweet and untroubled, I felt as though I was floating on air.

‘A stupa is a stupa is a stupa,’ said my father as we travelled from one Buddhist temple to the next, in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Sigiriya, Kandy,  Ratnapura, Galle, and Unawantuna Bay. Nothing could stop us (except occasionally two buses passing on a mountain hairpin turn). Rich in history, ritual, and religion Sri Lanka was strangely intoxicating to all who dropped in. This of course was before the outbreak of the civil war - now ended.

After completing a scuba diving course with Arthur C. Clarke’s Underwater Safaris, I soon had my sights on more watery destinations. Seven hundred kilometres south west of Sri Lanka was Maldives, an archipelago of nearly 1,200 islands, where the longest road was four kilometres. It seemed like a good choice for my first ocean dive. Mr Clarke was none to happy when he learned they had taken me down to one hundred twenty feet. 

In March 1980 we moved to Singapore. The city-island-state was an entirely new experience. For the first time we were living in a place with shopping malls, skyscrapers and highways. It was both thrilling and frustrating, not least for the lack of culture and wilderness. To celebrate my eighteenth birthday my father drove my brother and me to Rawa Island in Malaysia. It was to be my last hurrah before returning to Canada for a higher education. 

After three successive universities, I returned Singapore in 1985 to work as a free-lance journalist. My parents had moved again to a new posting, so I rented a room in a high-rise apartment in Ang Mo Kio, near the causeway. Keeping that as my base, I spent the next six months travelling north through Malaysia and Thailand. 

I hitchhiked most of the way, and whomever gave me a lift often gave me a tour of the sights too, affording me a unique insight into these lands and providing colourful material for my articles, published in the Singapore Monitor and Bangkok Post. I visited the Pahang Jungle, Penang, Koh Samui, Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok, Chang Mai, and Chiang Rai, finally ending my journey at the Golden Triangle, where I lived for a month in a stilted wooden hut suspended over the confluence of the Mekong and Sop Ruak rivers. Heaven!

Hoping to secure more permanent writing work I eventually wound up in Bangkok. Alas, there wasn’t enough to sustain me and, in need of a financial boost, I soon went into low orbit around Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where my parents were now living. Continental shifts were coming thick and fast, and soon I had moved again to England, where I would stay a while.

Preoccupied elsewhere, it was two years before I made my way back to Asia, for a holiday in Jakarta and Bali, Indonesia. Slowly, seductively, I was called back again, this time to Sri Lanka, for a World Bank conference on conflict minerals in 2006. On this occasion I met with my old friend Arthur C. Clarke for the last time before he died. 

Europe

European destinations were always a feature of home leave. It was hard to avoid them on the way back. Rather than route us through Heathrow every time, my mother and father tried to mix it up. Hence, we visited Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Athens, Rome, and many a chateaux, vineyard, monument, and relic in between. 

London was the city we frequented most, as it was my grandmother’s birthplace. For this reason, in 1986 I chose the British capital as somewhere to finally settle down. I was 22 and hadn’t had a permanent address in eighteen years. During the next twenty I lived in a small flat in north London, but travelled across Britain and the rest of Europe, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. 

South America

I only ever got a glimpse of this beguiling continent in 1974, on a whirlwind itinerary that took us from Dar-es-salaam to Rio de Janeiro, via Johannesburg. After a few days in Brazil, we spent a week with friends in Caracas, Venezuela, before flying up to Montreal via New York. 

North America

New York epitomizes this bold continent better than any other city. With its tall shiny buildings, big cars wheeling down broad streets, good food and snappy people, it never fails to invigorate. After Pan Am began scheduling flights directly from West Africa, we dropped in regularly, once on July 4^th 1976, America’s bicentennial. The flotilla of tall ships sailing into harbour were an inspiration to watch from my uncle’s 44^th storey Manhattan office.

During the Nineties and Oughts work often took me the United States. Nineteen states and one district to be exact -  MA, CT, NH, VM, NY, NJ, DC, GA, FL, TN, MI, IN, MN, ND, WI, IL, CO, CA, OR, and WA - with countless journeys to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. 

Paradoxically my home country Canada is the one place I’ve travelled least. Yet not until I experienced Vancouver Island did I begin to appreciate the true beauty of North America. 

My favourite country on the continent is Mexico. In 1984 I travelled by bus from Mexico City to Acapulco on the Pacific Coast. Recently I’ve been flying into San Jose del Cabo, Baja, not least because my parents now live there in their retirement. A heady mix of sun, desert and deep blue sea make this a great holiday destination. And there’s nothing quite like watching grey whales migrate while sipping margaritas by the Sea of Cortez. Todo magia!

Today I live in the middle of sunny Africa, in a suburb of Kampala where I write novels and guide safaris, regularly visiting some of the region’s most spectacular wildernesses. That’s not to say I no longer visit outside countries. Last year I stayed four months in Baja working on my second novel. And on my way back to Uganda I spent a month in Hollywood, three weeks in London and three weeks in a remote cottage in northern France. The journey never ends!

Soon To Be Released in America!

Starting this April, GORILLALAND will be distributed in the US and Canada a by Independent Publishers Group

“Fast-paced, gripping and a genuine page-turner, Cummings' action adventure marks the arrival of an author who rivals Wilbur Smith at the height of his powers."

Published by Cutting Edge Press, London, UK

Reader reviews:

"This is going to be fantastic book. The Diamonds are this book I'd say - what a gripping read. Brilliant, brilliant - brilliant. Tastes like a classic, feels like an epic. 5 stars."

"Fast read, entertaining, beautifully written, funny and exciting - bound to be a bestseller"

"WOW what a ride and a half! I'm out of breath! I want more. This was thoroughly enjoyable, well-written and clearly from the mind of an author who knows his terrain. I loved the characters though some were a bit scary. When is the movie coming out? That would be awesome."

Order Now from Amazon.com!

"In this, Cummings' first novel he brings his experiences in East Africa to produce a very authentic, fast-paced novel with characters which ring very true to many who have emerged during the decades of conflict in Congo and CAR. The lead villain, General Cosmo Zomba wa Zomba is a true-to-life depiction of a local warlord, but Madame Azziza Nshut, the treacherous, murdering arms dealer is the real villainess of the story.  At last a successor to Wilbur Smith as an author of ripping yarns set in the modern-day civil-war-torn areas of central Africa. I look forward to the movie and his next novel."

Ordre now from Amazon.ca!

"A compelling read . The story is fast paced with new twists and turns keeping your imagination on a continual high. Cummings seems to have a real grasp on the settings and characters in Africa probably due to his years of living there. This book wraps itself around characters who seem like something out of the mystery and ferocity that envelopes Africa and the abuses of some groups. Hopefully there will be a movie come out of this book or that it will be one of an exciting series."

AVAILABLE APRIL 1ST IN ALL MAJOR NORTH AMERICAN BOOKSTORES! 

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Images of the Four Congos

Modern Congo: 1960-2013

Belgian Congo: 1908-1960

Congo Free State: 1880-1908

Kingdom of Kongo: 1375-1665