Two Pumps for the Body Man

Yesterday upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish he’d go away.
- H. Mearns

…does that Star-spangled banner yet wave
o’er the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave?
- U.S. National Anthem

In this exciting new neo-noir, Jeff Mutton walks the diplomatic beat protecting American officials in Saudi Arabia. An expert with guns, knives, grenades, and rockets, he’s survived assaults and sieges, stabbings and chokeholds, car bombs, car-jackings, criminal hits, and countless other enemy threats. But instinct tells Mutton the menace he now faces dwarfs all these killers combined. The fool—his foot fetish has him in hot water again! Part soft-boiled noir, part literary satire, Two Pumps for the Body Man is an unserious look at a serious situation, a grim reminder that no matter how high the barricade, how sharp the razor wire, there is no front line to the War on Terror. And the enemy is everywhere, even within.

B.A. East studied writing at Central Connecticut State University and Education at the University of New Haven. He taught English in Malawi as a Peace Corps Volunteer, in New York at Brooklyn College Academy, and Literature at the American School of Asuncion in Paraguay. Later he joined the State Department’s Foreign Service, taking assignments in Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua, Ghana, Mexico, and Washington DC. His manuscript treating espionage and the West African coke trade was shortlisted in 2014 for two fiction prizes and his work has appeared in The Foreign Service Journal, Atticus Review, Crime Factory Magazine, and others. A surfer, an Ironman finisher, a Little League coach, Ben enjoys spending time with his wife Deepa Ramesh and their two sons in Virginia.