Tales of the Continent

About the Book

This satirical social first novel is intended as a kind of European response to Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City.

Instead of San Francisco, Pierre Tá Mar's novel is set mainly in Amsterdam (and partly in Brussels) in the 1970's and 1980's. The central thread running through the book is a bizarre murder committed at the Amsterdam's Central Station. The victim, a defrocked Priest is the administrator at a research and teaching institute at one of the city's universities. The attempts by Inspector Veenstra to find the killer bring to light many of the social and erotic peculiarities of Amsterdam and Brussels. This work is the intended as the first of a series.

About the Author

As his nom de plume implies, Pierre Tá Mar was a sailor. Following his sea time, he decided to study, then, alas, to work for a time with an excruciatingly boring and pretentious ?goody two shoes? Anglo-Dutchman consortium. Having, by an act of divine providence, seen the light, so to speak, he, an Anglo-Irish citizen decided to devote his life to art, culture, love, teaching and writing. Being, since childhood, by conviction, a fervent European, most if not all, of his many books and articles are concerned with the human dimension of this old continent. It is the love of the human social face of Europe that prompted the writing of this book, the plot of which is set mainly in Amsterdam in the wonderful 1970?s and early 1980?s. To some readers, this work may be seen as a kind of European response to Armistead Maupin?s Tales of the City, which is set in San Francisco, also in the 1970?s.

Pierre Tá Mar, whose age changes each day, has like all the members of his family (though he himself is only married to liberty and is not shackled to any individual human being) only one visceral hatred?injustice of any kind. But, he does also dislike phoniness. Currently his pet peeve is phony philistine good two shoes Tony Blair and his badly dressed wife person. Pierre Tá Mar currently splits his time between Europe, South Africa and the USA.

As was the case with the writing of the first volume of the most popular series of books by a now famous Scottish authoress, similarly Tales of the Continent was mainly written in a café and a pub in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.