Easton is introduced in Chapter 13, the “head prison guard” at Pare, the Auckland Prison where Bob Redell is. He is described as having a “thick New Zealand accent“ that “sounded friendly” but which had “an edge to it”. He is also described as having “made a whole career out of not putting up with people’s crap”.

Stratt later suggests to Grace that Easton is a little dictator in his little kingdom (13.020).

Easton’s direct speech consists of 9 quoted passages, 108 tokens, and 79 unique words.

He is the only character to say the words ‘contraband’ or ‘batons’ and the only person other than the narrator to use the words ‘search’, ‘Pare’, ‘guard’, ‘guards’, ‘torch’, or ‘rules’.