great book; Pendel is a gem of a guy, holy smokes what a character. i continue to love LeCarre's books. even if i don't follow a not-insignificant percentage of the plot & dialogue haha.

i wonder if the movie is good

Oof. It was a cleverly-written fun romp about liers lying until it got serious and dark and sad and... oof.

Very good, I didn't expect it to be so funny.

An homage to Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, but Greene's book was better written and half as long.

You will like this book if:

You are looking for a high brow spy novel.

Kudos: le Carré is the master of the genre. His writing is emulated because it is great. You can always expect quality characters and realistic espionage plots.

Critiques: I struggled to really get in to this book and know that I will probably give it another try later on. There were lots of sudden flashbacks that threw me off a little. I also wasn't a huge fan of the ending. I think too much time was spent on the climax with Mickie and not enough on the resolution.

Droll story of a tailor in Panama fooling British intelligence with stories of a "left-wing" conspiracy. Like the proverbial wolf, he finds his stories coming true, and he's stuck in a nightmare of his own making.

This is a slow-moving, but very intelligent book on how dependable intelligence actually is. I loved it overall, even if I found the book a bit too descriptive and pedantic in places.

For a complete review, see http://nishitak.com/2017/03/23/the-tailor-of-panama/

I stopped reading at page 121. I just can’t stay interested in this book. I was hoping for a page turner and this book is not that.

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 whose lives are impacted by their failed pursuits at advancement in western culture. There’s Harry Pendel, the half-Scottish half-Jewish secretly reformed criminal making his living off of fiction and money from debts that are about to be called in. There’s his wife Louisa, the lesser sister who acts like her neurotic parents and is saved only by fierce devotions to husband, country and God. There’s Andy Osnard, cynically bitter of how Britain’s changes led to the decline of his minor noble family, so he seeks an institution to ruin and finds it in espionage. There’s Mickie Abraxas, a spoiled rich secret revolutionary whose desire to do the right thing always puts him on the wrong side.

And then there’s Panama herself, a destitute Central American country ruined by American and European imperialism, which would otherwise be ignored by the rest of the world if not for its narrow strip of land that provided for an economic connection between east and west. Even with the Canal losing its relevance, it’s quite clear that the Americans and Japanese want to hold onto it for…well because they can’t imagine doing so otherwise. And the British of course hate standing on the sidelines. So…

There are parts of this book where the story drags, where Le Carré goes a little too long on his characters inner monologues. Nevertheless, this is a rollicking read, one of his more accessible books. You may laugh, you may cry, but the point will still be made.