The Green Overcoat

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. In Hilaire Belloc's wickedly playful The Green Overcoat, a shabby piece of clothing becomes the trigger for a chain of comic disaster, philosophical absurdity, and social scandal. Professor Higginson, a shy and respectable psychologist, is lured from a rain-soaked party by temptation, only to find himself drawn into a world where gentlemanly manners conceal menace and every practical choice has grotesque consequences. After slipping on the wrong coat, he is bundled into a taxi, abducted by the polished and unnerving Jimmy and Melba, and marched into a bleak house for a formalized extortion. Their cool, educated brutality turns ransom into a farcical negotiation, complete with signatures, cheques, and inflated demands. From there the story veers further into satire as Higginson's strange encounter with the Reverend Charles and a sensational reporter transforms private embarrassment into public "proof" of life after death. Soon he is besieged by headlines, sermons, and letters from the curious, the eminent, and the credulous alike. As fame swells into absurdity, his practical friend Babcock arrives to impose order on the chaos, sorting the flood of correspondence with brisk comic sense. Belloc's novel is a sharp, darkly funny satire of publicity, vanity, and the human appetite for revelation.