The Tailor of Panama

Written with endless wit and some dark humor, Le Carre proves himself again as a master of words as he plots a classic spy story- and the greatness of it is that this is both a spy story and an anti-spy story. Do no except Tom-Clancy-like-action since this novel is about the humans and not the missiles. Harry Pendel is an anti-hero, a man drowning himself in a sea of lies, lying to the British intelligence- fabricating tales upon tales, lying to his beloved wife, lying to himself. With a multitude of conspiracy fabrications of all sorts, this story almost becomes a wry satire about the spy world. Panama city and its characters are portrayed in a rich and elegant manner. The dialogues are complicated and brilliant; loaded with so much tidbits of fiction that Le Carre's mind seems to be a bottomless pit of ideas. I'm sure that many people who expected more action gave it low reviews because of this- explaining the surprisingly low average rating. But the novel is not uneventful, and it contains a cynical plot of intrigue and greed, and some satirical jabs at some imperialistic desires still present in some dark elderly western power holders. This is literature, subtle, elegant and stylish, humorous and at its best. And poor pathetic Harry Pendel, with all his weaknesses, is a character as human as can be, and one you can only sympathize with.

The parallels are not just a matter of both books being about bumbling spies being comically deceived by false information. They are both set in Latin America and Pendel and Wormwold are both English expats concerned about their families. I cannot believc that a plotmaster like Le Carre just ran out of ideas. There is some devious purpose. Grahame Greene was closely linked with Panama. Is that a clue? It is a great read in its own right. Le Carre takes pages of exposition to say what Greene said in a sentence, but by the same token you get 400 pages whereas OMIH is a mere novella. Greene barely hints at the Havana atmosphere. LeCarre takes us to Panama. LeCarre is an excellent writer. Greene was genius.

One of the best novels I have ever read. Makes "the spy who came in from the cold" seem like a cardboard cutout of a novel in comparison. After having lived in Latin America I found the description of Panama vivid and very romantic. The characters are exaggerated and entering the realm of caricature but were real enough to evoke my empathy and make me squirm with embarrassment at the recognition of some of my own failings, and laugh at those I don't yet admit to. Above all the weakness and sadness in some of these characters' lives *is* very real for many people and as such parts of the book had me close to tears. I can't help thinking that the people who didn't like this book are either looking for the simple gratification of suspense and discovery found in "true" spy novels or are frightened of such a frank exposition of human frailty.

i think perhaps many of the reviews here miss the point of this novel. It is not, I agree, Le Carre's best thriller. It is instead a satire, not about Panama, but about the propensity we all have to believe our own lies, and those whose lies justify actions we want to take anyway. It has been said here that he misrepresents Panama while sparing the west(England), also that le Carre is tired and out of ideas since the cold war ended. Far from the truth. His writing style may be slow for those raised on TV, but it has a point. His last 3 novels(Our Game, The Night Manager, and this one) can be seen together as a manysided indictment of the West at the end of the Cold War. They are among his best novels as literature, and should be read not as thrillers, but as examinations of wasted lies, of the arrogance of the West and it's willingness to sacrifice innocents for political and economic conveniences, of the corruption of money at the center of our intitutions at the century's end. Thank you Mr. Le Carre, for doing more than sitting back and gloating on the so called victory of the West.

As a writer myself, I experience a variety of feelings when reading the works of others. Sometimes it's a great deal of frustration and impatience, occasionally some anger, and less often then I'd like, real pleasure. Rarely, though, do I feel jealousy, but such is the case with The Tailor of Panama. It's that good.Several words spring to mind when talking about the spy novels of LeCarre: difficult, impenetrable, obtuse. Honestly now - how many have you actually read through to the conclusion? I suspect that the circuitous construction and non-linear plot progressions are deliberate, intended not so much to precisely tell a story as to convey a feeling, that of actually being involved in some tortuously complex web of deceit and doublecross. After all, if George Smiley himself is confused, discomfited and suspicious, why shouldn't we experience similar vagueness as we follow his exploits?In that regard, The Tailor of Panama represents a significant departure for the universally-acknowledged master of the espionage thriller, because it is easily the most accessible of his novels. That's good news in itself, but it gets better, because this singular gem of a novel may also be his best written. It is also based on a unique premise. How to put this without blowing the surprises, of which there are many...One of the worst fears of an intelligence case officer is that the asset he is controlling is a double agent loyal to the other side. That concept is central to more spy stories than it is possible to count, as is the notion of a mole in your own organization. In The Tailor of Panama, LeCarre presents a new dilemma, a situation that, at least in my limited familiarity with the genre, hasn't been tackled before. Which is all I plan to say about it.The first part of the book is actually humorous, as LeCarre casts a wry eye - and ear - at the bombast of expatriate Britishers trying to maintain traditional civility in uncivil lands. In this case, that ! kind of overblown pomposity has implanted itself within British intelligence, with disastrous results; the last part of the book is anything but funny, as we witness the degree of catastrophe that can flow from the kind of carelessness engendered by an out-of-control sense of self-importance.Set against the backdrop of the Panama Canal's impending handover to the local citizenry, it's a great story, full of huge but understated surprises and soundly buttressed by brilliant and controlled writing that is a joy to read and, for many passages, to re-read. Absent the kind of dizzying complexities that require such an investment in other of his novels, The Tailor of Panama drags us willingly into intrigue gone very wrong even as we wince at the awful events that precipitate out of the collision of one man's towering arrogance and another's desperate vulnerability. One only hopes that the character of anti-hero Andrew Osnard returns in a future volume to wreak more havoc for our amusement.