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The Tailor of Panama

John le Carré

3.49 · Rating details · 7,423 ratings · 387 reviews

Le Carré's Panama—the young country of 2.5 million souls which, on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal—is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption.

Seldom has the weight of global politics descended so heavily on such a tiny and unprepared nation. And seldom has the hidden eye of British Intelligence selected s

Seldom has the weight of global politics descended so heavily on such a tiny and unprepared nation. And seldom has the hidden eye of British Intelligence selected such an unlikely champion as Harry Pendel—a charmer, a dreamer, an evader, a fabulist and presiding genius of the house of Pendel & Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of London and presently of Panama City.

Yet there is a logic to the spies' choice. Everybody who is anybody in Central America passes through Pendel's doors. He dresses politicos and crooks and conmen. His fitting room hears more confidences than a priest's confessional. And when Harry Pendel doesn't hear things as such—well, he hears them anyway, by other means.

For what is a tailor for, if not to disduise reality with appearance? What is truth if not the plaything of the artist? And what are spies and politicians and journalists if not themselves selectors and manipulators of the truth for their own ends?

In a thrilling, hilarious novel, le Carré has provided us with a satire about the fate of truth in modern times. Once again, he has effortlessly expanded the borders of the spy story to bring us a magnificent entertainment straight out of the pages of tomorrow's history.

JOHN LE CARRÉ was born in 1931. After attending the universities of Bern and Oxford, he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. His third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was solidified by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His mostly autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy, wa followed by The Russia House, The Night Manager and Our Game. The Tailor of Panama is his sixteenth novel.

John le Carré lives in Cornwall, England.

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Hardcover, 332 pages

Published October 14th 1996 by Knopf

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Lists with This Book

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

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Oct 23, 2013 Anna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: spies, fiction

This is best book about bullshit I’ve ever read. It is a wonderfully dry satire on Britain’s inept attempts to overreach itself in foreign affairs. The setting is Panama in the late 1990s and the fate of the canal is a hot topic of discussion. Back in Britain, a shadowy cabal decides that a new listening post should be opened there, so they select a fleshy twentisomething public school boy for the job. Of course they do. Andrew Osnard, as he is called, arrives in Panama and recruits a tailor nam ...more

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Apr 19, 2011 George K. Ilsley rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

i have enjoyed previous spy thrillers by John le Carre, so perhaps it was just me, and my distracted circumstances while reading this book, but I found it to be dull and rather a slog. Somehow I forced myself to finish it, imagining that it had to get better. It did not.

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Mar 17, 2018 Quirkyreader rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book had me in stitches. Yes, le Carre can be very funny.

Aside from this book being hilarious I was caught by the story and wanted to finish it quickly. I also enjoyed the way how le Carre employed spycraft in this story.

If you need a thrilling humour break, give this story a go.

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Jan 12, 2020 fleurette rated it did not like it

Shelves: spy, dnf

When I was younger, I almost never left unfinished a book that I once started reading. Even if it bored me completely and I didn't like it at all. I think it was because of school reading, which was often boring but I still had to read it. At the age of fifteen, I went with my mother for a two-week vacation abroad. No one had heard about kindle back then and we took only two books with us. One of them was by John le Carré. I read the second one in the first two days, what left me with twelve day When I was younger, I almost never left unfinished a book that I once started reading. Even if it bored me completely and I didn't like it at all. I think it was because of school reading, which was often boring but I still had to read it. At the age of fifteen, I went with my mother for a two-week vacation abroad. No one had heard about kindle back then and we took only two books with us. One of them was by John le Carré. I read the second one in the first two days, what left me with twelve days and only le Carré to read. I could not make it. I haven't even gone through the first fifty pages of this book. I read from cover to cover all the magazines that fell into my hands (even those that didn't interest me at all), I read two newspapers in foreign languages that I didn't speak at all and probably some boring romance in English (and I didn't know English so well at that time, so it was quite a job). But in two weeks I couldn't read le Carré. Bored over the top and left with this one possibility, I still couldn't read this book.

Now, being a lot older, I decided to give le Carré one more chance and reached for one of his most famous novels, The Tailor of Panama. Oh, no no no no. Nothing has changed in the last several years. I still can't read his book. I forced myself as much as I could, reached a little over 40% and the thought that I have to read the next 60% is enough to make me feel miserable.

I can't even say what exactly I have a problem with. I think it's his writing style. Which stretches like chewed gum you try to unstick from under the chair, numb like a thirteen-hour flight after which you get a jet lag that leaves you totally confused and at times pseudo-poetic like poems of a thirteen-year-old with this bizarre pseudo-depth. Generally one of the most boring things I've read recently.

The situation is not saved by the plot or the characters. The plot may still be there, but the action is completely missing. Everything drags on. At a snail's pace. Scene after scene. Little by little. One meaningless conversation after another. Unhurriedly. From time to time a side thread that supposed to diversify the story and enrich the character, what story do I ask? And of course, a flashback, as if everything was not slow enough. Christ, how slow it is, counted in minutes! If you can handle this pace, that's fine, you might even like this book, but I couldn't stand it. After reading one page I was so bored that I couldn't bring myself to read the next one.

The thing is, Harry Pendel is even quite an interesting hero. But the writing style killed any desire to follow his actions in me. There was also something that irritated and upset me. I can't even say exactly what.

I was seriously wondering whether to force myself to finish this book, but reading it is such an unpleasant experience for me that I decided to abandon it. Le Carré is probably just not for me. I doubt I'll ever read his book again or finish this one. In fact, I'm so uninterested in this story that I don't even feel like watching a movie to find out how it all ended. ...more

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Apr 24, 2018 Nigeyb rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Between February 2017 and September 2017 I read the entire George Smiley series. Having reached the end of the series, I was left wondering about John le Carré's life and work, and whether to read other books by him, and so I read ‘John le Carré: The Biography’ by Adam Sisman in April 2018. ‘John le Carré: The Biography’ convinced me I should probably read everything John le Carré has ever written, and so it was I came to 'The Tailor Of Panama' (1996) my first non-Smiley JLC book.

It is very cle ...more

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May 22, 2014 Philip rated it really liked it

At the end of The Tailor Of Panama John Le Carré acknowledges his debt to a previous work that presented a similar theme, Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana. Both books are about the oxymoron that we call intelligence, so often self-contradictory because the label is only useful when there’s a lack of it. Such gaps need to be filled, and when we don’t have sufficient material it might be necessary to invent a little, just to keep everyone happy. And such is the plot of The Tailor Of Panama, who c At the end of The Tailor Of Panama John Le Carré acknowledges his debt to a previous work that presented a similar theme, Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana. Both books are about the oxymoron that we call intelligence, so often self-contradictory because the label is only useful when there’s a lack of it. Such gaps need to be filled, and when we don’t have sufficient material it might be necessary to invent a little, just to keep everyone happy. And such is the plot of The Tailor Of Panama, who constructs his own reality, tailors his own design to ensure his paymasters get what they want. The irony of the situation lies, of course, in the fact that intelligence is most useful in those areas where those who desire it possess the least knowledge, thus opening up multiple avenues for fabrication without fear of contradiction.

In The Tailor Of Panama John Le Carré places Harry Pendel at the centre of the action. He is the tailor of the title, a crafter of quality bespoke outer garments, whose customers include some of the wealthiest and politically most significant actors in Panamanian society. The idea that floats in and out of the plot is the possibility, surely only ever imagined, that on expiry of the Canal Treaty a Southern-Eastern initiative will seek to construct a new canal to undercut the original by reducing transit times. The strategic interest that the original canal represented would, of course, accrue to the new grouping. And it is this aspect that certain intelligence circles cannot stomach.

It falls to one Andrew Osnard, a rather overweight English slob, to investigate, to commission and to gather intelligence on the matter. At the outset, Osnard calls on Pendel, ostensibly in seek of some expensive suits, but there is recruitment in the air. Quite why it would be the British rather than their American masters who would be involved is one of the book’s less convincing angles, but then part of the novel’s raison d’etre is to portray such potentially serious activity as riddled with actual farce. The problem eventually is that the farce can turn serious at any point, and not only for those directly involved.

The specific problem for Harry Pendel, British tailor, formerly of Savile Row, London, is that, despite his prowess with the cloth, thread and scissor, he is a man with form of another kind. He also needs the dosh, having entered a deal or two beyond his means and found himself out of a pocket he did not stitch. He is well connected, not only via his own elite customers, but also by virtue of his wife’s connections courtesy of her employer. Even his assistant has a bone to pick with her country’s political past, and she still bears the scars of previous activity. Thus Pendel becomes a chosen one, a member of a select team that simply has to deliver.

A review of The Tailor Of Panama should not divulge any detail of the book’s plot since, despite John Le Carré’s often beautiful characterisation and description, it’s what happens within these pages that is eventually important. Suffice it so say that, of course, not everything turns out as the reader, or even the protagonists might have expected. But then, after all, if we did have the knowledge we needed to predict, we would not need to seek out intelligence to fill the gaps.

The Tailor Of Panama is perhaps a tad over-long, and at least some of the diversions seem rather artificial. But surely in the real world, if anything in today’s surveillance society remains under-documented, there still exists the need for those in power to embroider, to decorate for public consumption, to add justification’s weight to flimsy evidence. It’s not only novelists who make things up.
...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Kristin rated it it was ok

Shelves: lecarre-spy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I picked up The Tailor of Panama because I had been overwhelmed and bowled-over by the awesomeness of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Half Price Books did not have a copy of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I read TTSS on the plane from Europe, and the plot reached out to me and entangled me in its roots; I was fitfully half asleep, thinking and dreaming of the Spy - The Great Game - The Mole - KARLA! - Petrov! and that is when you know a book is good.

The Tailor of Panama was the exact opposite ...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Dee Green rated it did not like it

I have been on a spy-thriller kick for a little while now. I wanted to read some of Le Carre's books, but they are mostly not available on the Kindle. I was in a used book store and found several of his novels cheap. I decided to "slum" it and read a real book. When trying to decide which book I found a recommendation online that listed The Tailor of Panama as one of Le Carre's top 4 books. If this is one of his best, I'd hate to read the ones not on the list. This book was bad! There did not se ...more

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Apr 09, 2011 J. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: greene party members

Shelves: le-carre, suspense-espionage, con-games, americas, caribbean

Chance Favors The Prepared Mind - Pascal

Not a suspense / espionage in the regular le Carré mode, but a satire of same, and an expansive, elaborate novel at that. Since the demise of the Cold War this author has been casting around for another conflict to narrate, and I'm not sure le Carré has ever allowed himself to be this carried away by his characters and their dramatic entanglements.

That being said, there is an enormous asterisk here. The story of a bourgeois merchant-class civilian who is ...more

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Sep 13, 2014 Andrew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I recently watched mark Lawson's BBC4 interview with Le Carre and this book was referenced by the writer as one of his favourites. What is interesting in this book is Le Carre's ability to develop an initially comic situation within a few chapters into a story about vanity and greed. It demonstrates how a lie develops through the wishes of the intelligence service and media interests into the premise for an invasion. The story itself pitches a newly appointed spy sent to Panama , Andy Osnard, in ...more

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Nov 26, 2010 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

Yet another Le Carre novel that knocks the spots off so many others I pick up in the average year, borne by the relentless characterisations that gradually shake off the disbelief and draw you in completely to the story being told. What begins as a not very credible collection of near comic caricatures grows into some sort of reality while allowing the plot to strain at the limits of believability, anchored by the thoughts and actions of the principle protagonists. I didn’t warm to the Tailor th ...more

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Jul 30, 2018 Lori rated it really liked it

Shelves: espionage, fiction

Let's just say that I'm very glad that John le Carre is a man who likes to tell stories. I will be scouring used book stores for more of his work now that I've been introduced to his witty and intelligent writing style. I prefer vintage dust jackets - I think they look great on my bookshelves. I picture le Carre as a lapels turned up sort of guy - a guy that can hail a cab with a mere wave of his hand.

Yeah, I've found a new favorite author. I loved the mix of characters, some I liked and others ...more

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Nov 01, 2015 Clark Gudas rated it it was ok

So long and unbelievably complex. I could follow the action reasonably well but it wasn't easy or very enjoyable. It wasn't a bad plot, just very verbose, and my lack of understanding Panamanian politics didn't help either =P ...more

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Aug 01, 2007 Kay rated it really liked it

Shelves: espionage, fiction, british_lit

I probably picked the wrong book to read as my first Le Carré spy novel, as I'm know there are many "classic" Le Carré novels that are probably more representative, but I still enjoyed this book quite a bit. I knew to expect moral complexities, of course, and a slightly jaundiced and world-weary outlook. Obviously, Le Carré is working in the tradition of Graham Greene here.

What I hadn't expected, though, was how mordantly funny Le Carré can be, not in an overt but in a subtle way. There's satir ...more

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Feb 20, 2015 Ana rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: z-europe-north-and-west, bxing

This was quite an enjoyable reading, even though spying and international intrigue is not among my favourite genres. But I had this book lying around for too long and decided I had to read it before letting it go again through Bookcrossing, which is where it came from. One of the things I found very interesting is how the core of the story of The Tailor of Panama remains so up-to-date: intelligence services from developed countries looking for new purposes by messing around in the third world, a ...more

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Jul 12, 2019 Drew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I recently read a lovely, hilarious piece on Popula in praise of le Carré, particularly his semi-indecipherability and how that is, in fact, a feature and not a bug of his work. (Here's that link: https://popula.com/2019/02/03/like-ma...)

This one is a great look at bullshitters managing to ride the whip for as long as they can. Pendel is a world-class creation, absolutely delightful, and watching him dig himself a hole (and then learning that everyone else is also digging away, for themselves an ...more

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Jul 22, 2013 Diana rated it liked it

I was thoroughly (and possibly unfairly) disappointed by Tailor of Panama. It's almost a bridge in subject matter between le Carre's spectacular Cold war books (the Smiley novels, etc) which he does very well, and the machinations of multinational corporations (Constant Gardener), which he also tells very well. In Tailor of Panama, le Carre describes the post-Cold War era when the Service was searching for a new purpose by messing around in third world countries, and his writing is a little mess ...more

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Mar 03, 2008 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature, fiction-20th-century, book-and-movie, suspense-thriller, espionage

A tailor living in Panama reluctantly becomes a spy for a British Agent.

A movie was made based on this book, with Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis.

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Apr 02, 2020 Boadicea rated it liked it

Shelves: 20th-century, espionage

Confabulation in Central America-classic Le Carré tale of colonial incompetence.

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Feb 09, 2020 Lisabet Sarai rated it it was amazing

I continue to believe that John le Carre is one of the most underrated authors in contemporary fiction. Typically dismissed as an author of "spy fiction", le Carre in fact writes novels with unforgettable characters that address serious moral issues and lay bare the distortions and hypocrisies practiced by every government - the "good" guys as well as the "bad".

The Tailor of Panama pushes this even further. Though the book is ostensibly about the British intelligence service, there's no dastardl I continue to believe that John le Carre is one of the most underrated authors in contemporary fiction. Typically dismissed as an author of "spy fiction", le Carre in fact writes novels with unforgettable characters that address serious moral issues and lay bare the distortions and hypocrisies practiced by every government - the "good" guys as well as the "bad".

The Tailor of Panama pushes this even further. Though the book is ostensibly about the British intelligence service, there's no dastardly plot to destroy modern civilization. There are no villains, unless you count clever, seductive, amoral Andy Osnard, an ambitious young operative determined to make his fortune at the expense of his employers and everyone else. The book includes plots and counterplots, secrets and exposes, but ultimately it's all illusion. Every so called fact is manufactured, and everyone contributes to the falsehoods. Everyone is living a lie.

Osnard convinces his superiors to send him to Panama in the nineties, as the US is preparing to hand over control of the canal, to find out what is "really" going on. Through a combination of blackmail and charm, he recruits master tailor Harry Pendel to provide him with information about the President (for whom Harry's wife works), about the supposed student opposition, about the rumored revolutionary movement supposedly headed by Harry's old friend and cell mate Mickie Abraxas. Harry, a sociable Jewish guy, gives Andy what he wants. But despite nuggets of truth, most of what Harry offers is totally fabricated, the product of Harry's imaginative "fluence".

In fact, Harry has little choice. He's fighting for the life he has built in Panama with his wife and children, his reputation as tailor to everyone who is anyone, his freedom. He figures that his fibs will not hurt anyone - but ultimately he is wrong. The false information he provides ultimately leads to murder, suicide and finally, war. Yet Harry is not a bad man at all - in fact, he is the closest this book offers to a hero.

This is a cautionary tale which makes clear the fact that "fake news" is not a new phenomenon. Dark, painful and magnificently readable.

I do wish le Carre got more respect.

...more

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Jan 18, 2019 Jake rated it really liked it

Shelves: espionage

I have yet to read Graham Greene’s famous spy satire Our Man in Havana, but I’m familiar with the premise and am well aware that John Le Carré is aping it here. He’s having a blast splattering colored paint on the immaculately white walls of British imperialism. Until he remembers that these characters have stories, hearts and lives too.

That’s what makes The Tailor of Panama so fascinating. Transparently a satire of western intelligence work, Le Carré also paints vivid portraits of characters wh ...more

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Jul 23, 2014 J.I. rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2014

A spy novel about confusion, this is one that will confound many. There is nothing in this book of any substance, but rather and intelligence officer puts the screws too tight on a man who likes to tell stories and exaggerate and the agency puts too much faith in the agent. The result is that everyone gets what they want a little too well, the storyteller gets to tell his stories, the spy gets to hear them and the agency gets that chance to grasp for power they've seen slipping out of their fing ...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Lemar rated it really liked it

Shelves: novel, crime-fiction, thriller, mystery, brit-lit

My first Le Carre book struck me with the high quality of writing. The characters were idiosyncratic and believable as was the larger political intrigue, great read!

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Sep 12, 2020 Emma rated it it was amazing

*chef kissing fingers*

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Sep 24, 2012 Steve rated it really liked it

At least as much satire as serious spy novel, it is full of subtle humor and irony. The protagonist, Harry Pendel, is a tailor to the rich, well healed, and politically connected in Panama. In dire financial straights because of a bad investment of his wife's money in a rice farm and blackmailed/pressured by his hidden past, Pendel is recruited to spy on Panamanian political developments. As his spy work progresses, Harry is increasingly pressured to come up with more detailed and significant in At least as much satire as serious spy novel, it is full of subtle humor and irony. The protagonist, Harry Pendel, is a tailor to the rich, well healed, and politically connected in Panama. In dire financial straights because of a bad investment of his wife's money in a rice farm and blackmailed/pressured by his hidden past, Pendel is recruited to spy on Panamanian political developments. As his spy work progresses, Harry is increasingly pressured to come up with more detailed and significant inside information. Harry's whole life has been a fabrication so embroidering the truth to provide the more provocative information his masters want comes naturally to him. His con becomes more and more involved, as he uses real friends and acquaintances in plausible yet exaggerated or even completely fabricated scenarios of political intrigue. Not surprisingly, his contact, Osnard, adds his own enhancements to the reports, as does his superior as well - to make the reports all the more compelling to those at the top, and thus advance careers and keep the support money flowing. For his part, Harry becomes so embroiled in his role, so enthralled with his creations, that he does not consider the potential consequences of his machinations, even as his superiors march down the road to action.

Like most of LeCarre's novels, the story line is not simple and linear, there is a lot of subtle insight into the political spy realm, including its more stultifying beauracratic aspects, action takes a back seat to the spy games's more complicated political intrigue, and characters tend to be multi-faceted, neither all good nor all bad, complicated and compromised as we all really are. Despite his flaws, I found Harry Pendel a strangely likable fellow. He stays physically faithful, in his own way, to his wife Louisa, even as he acknowledges his love and attachment to his true soul mate, Marta. Despite his cavalier, mendacious abilities, and his sacrifice, however unintentional, of friends in his game of fictitious espionage, as Marta notes, "the guilt owns him, he has more guilt than sins." Perhaps that is why I like Harry; so many spy novel protagonists are so full of themselves. Harry is not. ...more

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Apr 11, 2014 Clif Hostetler rated it liked it

Shelves: novel

I listened to the audio of this book in the early 2000s before my Goodreads.com days so I didn't write my own review. The following is from the November 2004 PageADay Book Lover's Calendar. The main thing I remember from the book is that it was difficult to follow what was going on. I'm not sure I really understood the story.

THE TAILOR OF PANAMA, by John Le Carré (Ballantine Books, 2001), There ought to be a new way to express “double cross,” if only for the sake of John Le Carré novels. In ...more

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Nov 06, 2017 Nilesh rated it liked it

Shelves: good-fiction

Here is a wonderful plot which goes substantially underused because of the point(s) of view used by the author.

Given his background Mr le Carre narrates an extraordinarily good political manipulation story from the viewpoints of its perpetrators. The author is comfortable discussing the lives, the methods, the thinkings of sleuths and people they encounter - as long as most are British. The same story could have been told much better with the plot as the backdrop, its perpetrators as some of the ...more

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Jun 17, 2010 John rated it liked it

Shelves: pulp-novels

The first of le Carre's novels that I have tried, this one was OK. Set in Panama, a local tailor to the wealthy and powerful with a penchant for pleasant meaningless conversation and a prior criminal background becomes a spy for an avaricious young britian. Largely he creates fantastical plots for his spymaster which ultimately culminates in an US invasion.
Although it was written better than 10 years ago, it harkens to recent events that led to the Iraqi innvasion on a mad hunt for WMDs which ...more

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Oct 06, 2016 Noo rated it it was ok

Shelves: mystery, abandoned-hope

This could be one of the most boring books I've ever attempted to get in to. I used to be pigheadedly determined to finish the books I'd started, but after trawling through 9 books of The Wheel of Time, I realised that life is too short to read bad fiction.

Anyway, 100 pages in and NOTHING HAPPENED. And I cared not for the characters that nothing was happening to, so I'm out. ...more

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Mar 30, 2020 Isca Silurum rated it liked it

Seemed at times a parody to me.

Maybe I'm just dim. ...more

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About John le Carré

John le Carré

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John le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), was an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré had resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than 40 years, where he owned a mile of cliff close to Land's End. ...more

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (George Smiley, #5)

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Quotes from The Tailor of Panama

“And we dress, sir --?" he murmured, feeling Osnard's gaze burning the nape of his neck. "Most of my gentlemen seem to favour left these days. I don't think it's political."
This was his standard joke, calculated to raise a laugh even with the most sedate of his customers. Not with Osnard apparently.
"Never know where the bloody thing is. Bobs about like a windsock," he replied dismissively.” — 6 likes

“And what’s life if it isn’t invention? Starting with inventing yourself.” — 4 likes

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