FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
“Why would anyone—he was soon to ask himself innumerable times—take a coat from a complete stranger only because it had been offered?”
You are standing, waiting for an elevator. The doors open and a strange man hands you an overcoat, which you accept without thinking. After a beat you realize that you are now standing at the same elevator in possession of said overcoat and its “owner” is nowhere to be seen. Now what?
Theater critic, book reviewer, and writer David Finkle, whose characters encountered extraordinary people and events in his first book of short stories People Tell Me Things, is as entertaining as ever in his debut novel, THE MAN WITH THE OVERCOAT (Nth Position Press; April 28th, 2015; $6.99). In his book, Finkle focuses his creative talents on the main character Skip Gerber—a man in a quandary who travels through the depths of New York City to find the mysterious owner of the overcoat, which by the way, Skip and others have noted, actually suits him quite well indeed.
THE MAN WITH THE OVERCOAT
By: David Finkle
“Skip wasn’t about to tell his mother he was in Central Park looking at the statue of a man wearing an overcoat eerily similar to one he’d accepted for no good reason a few short hours earlier. She wouldn’t believe him. Who would believe him? He half didn’t believe himself.”
While following the clues he finds in the nooks and crannies of the coat itself, Skip is harangued by phone, by his mother Bernice, his broke brother Jerry, and his snooty, sort-of fiancé, Faye—who is waiting for him to meet her for dinner with friends, downtown. People who help Skip with his scavenger hunt are taxicab drivers who believe that Skip is being followed; a group of partying drag queens who rename him Alice; and a woman he rescues from robbers—could she be the love of Skip’s life?
Where did this overcoat come from? Why are so many people interested in it? Has somebody been following him since the moment Skip put it on? And why are the gargoyles on the tops of buildings falling? Is it all a coincidence, or is the overcoat that has been placed in Skip’s care a dangerous talisman?
Like a classic Hitchcock thriller, THE MAN WITH THE OVERCOAT challenges its protagonist to venture out of his comfort zone and the life he thought he was happily living, into the strange unknown.
About the Author:
David Finkle is a New York-based writer who concentrates on the arts. He writes regularly for The Huffington Post, The Clyde Fitch Report, and The Village Voice. He’s contributed to many publications, including The New York Times, The New York Post, The Nation, The New Yorker, New York, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and American Theatre. Learn more at http://www.davidfinkle.com/