Peter Mountford is a Seattle-based writer whose debut novel,A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism, was published in April 2011. As a child, Mountford witnessed the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka and spent holidays in Scotland with his father’s family; later on, he worked at a think tank in Ecuador and lived in Paris and Mexico.
"He was tempted to ask her why she was telling Grayson her secrets, not sharing them with him, but he didn't want to seem insecure. And having been rebuffed twice already that day, he knew she was his last hope of finding out something valuable. He needed to placate her. He swallowed his pride and went for a flip tone. 'He did say that. Why would he say that?'
'I don't know. Because he's a mind reader?' She threw her sinewy legs over his thighs. Her body language was adolescent. The exuberance came off as prepubescent, and her flirtation was often PG-13, but she was doubtlessly aiming for a pornographic conclusion. That seemed to be the nature of the transaction. It was his duty to negotiate this maze of innuendo without embarrassing himself or her, but it was his job — put bluntly — to extract information from her at any cost."
– Peter Mountford, A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism