It's like cotton candy melting in your mouth–just a really fun read. It's about how things can escalate outside of your control when you fall down a slippery slope.

This one took a while to get into as I didn’t like Pendel or Osnard and the first 200 pages really focus on them. The chapters are also disjoint at times with many cut scenes. I found the many cut scenes gave me more of an inclination to set the book down and do something else. It is a definite style departure from the flowing 30-40 page consistently flowing prose of his previous novels.

At times I started to regret my project of reading his novels in chronological order but luckily things did turn around in this novel. Many characters that were treated sparingly at the beginning of the novel got their just first person sections later on as everything came to a head. This painted a well thought out world of characters in the second half of the book. Although I found the Louisa section entertaining I found her behaviour unbelievable. I’m sure some feminists would have some choice words but don’t they always?

Although different I would recommend this novel to anyone that enjoyed The Looking Glass War as it has the same theme of ineptitude in a spy operation with the added icing of corruption and deceit.

blah, blah, blah... slow...no plot... give me a break

A brilliant character study, the plot of which I slightly lost track of in the last quarter (though that may just be the brain-fog of having children). It won't be my favourite Le Carré, but neither is he capable of writing a dull novel.

I can see why this complex and richly entertaining novel isn’t as popular on Goodreads as many of Le Carré’s other books. The propulsive urgency of the story sags in places, which is the reason that I’m giving it a positive but slightly qualified recommendation. It was bound to disappoint Le Carré’s spy thriller audience, because it doesn’t do what books in that genre are supposed to. It’s not even a spy thriller, really, though it is a novel about spying.

You could say that it belongs to a very small sub-genre, along with Our Man in Havana: the Bitingly Satirical Spy Caper. And while The Tailor of Panama doesn’t captivate the reader with the same charmingly effervescent blend of suspense and comedy as Our Man in Havana, the satire hits home just as effectively as it does in Greene’s book. In fact this novel elaborates and updates Greene’s theme, pushing it to a logical conclusion that remains all too resonant in today’s world of intelligence-targeted official violence.

Whatever you think of its themes, I think we can all agree that Le Carré is a remarkably accomplished writer with a particular strength in the art of creating interesting, impossible-to-forget characters. In this book the imaginatively prodigious tailor himself, Harry Pendel, stands out, as does the resourceful and despicable spy manager, Andrew Osnard.

A novelist might ask: What specific techniques does Le Carré use to create such amazing characters?

For one answer, you can read my craft analysis here: http://bit.ly/28ZaxVh

Loved the dry, ironic wit of this, and how jolting it feels when that irony collides with the horrible repercussions of making things up. Also, the women in The Tailor of Panama are a good deal more interesting and rounded than in some of Le Carré's other books (lookin' at you, A Most Wanted Man.) Marta, Pendel's secretary and former revolutionary, is especially good. Perfect holiday reading: no need to check your brain at page one but nevertheless flies by.

from http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-tailor-of-panama.html

John le Carré clearly had a lot of fun writing The Tailor of Panama, which is spy novel as farce. If you don't want spoilers then stop reading, because it's hard not to discuss it without giving it away. Not, mind you, that it is particularly intricate. There is a nod to Graham Greene's Our Man in Panama, which le Carré makes explicit in the acknowledgements.

Harry Pendel is a British tailor in Panama City in the 1990s, and a British spy shows up at his door to recruit him. The spy has something on him, so he needs to cooperate. He doesn't have much to tell, so he starts making things up: foreign threats, a Silent Opposition, betrayals, all of them false. As he makes things up, London and eventually Washington get excited. And, in fact, it leads to another invasion.

Sound implausible? Well, it is, but it's great reading, brimming with sarcasm, but also full of obvious affection for the Panamanian people and contempt for those who lead them.

Great Men in Panama have gorgeous black secretaries in prim blue bus-conductress uniforms. They have panelled, steel-lined bullet-proof doors of rain-forest teak with brass handles you can't turn because the doors are worked on buzzers from within so that Great Men can't be kidnapped (p. 9).

While much of the book is quite funny, the end is not, as it shows a reflection on the fact that Panama has always been tossed about according to the whims of the U.S. (in this case with the British alongside). Harry had suffered tremendously during the 1989 invasion as he watched Panamanian friends seriously abused, and watched again as Panama City was pummeled, knowing he had played an unwitting role in causing it.

quintessential le Carré, bungling spies and all. his writing is impeccable.