The Tailor of Panama

Le Carré in top form, and at times surprisingly hilarious. Borrowing heavily from Greene's Our Man in Havana this is a scathing treatment of British espionage's diminishing role in a post Cold War era, full of opportunists, crooks, bullshitters and careerist arse-lickers. Thoroughly entertaining

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 named Harry Pendel to start a network. Unfortunately everyone is lying to each other and also themselves, leaving the actual fate of Panama in other hands. Osnard and Pendel are a fascinating pair, both exhibiting a range of flaws. Their show more manipulations lay bare the hypocrisies of the British class system, as well as the ease with which these hypocrisies are exported.

It took me a while to get into the novel at first, as some time is expended initially on scene-sitting. I was immersed by page 100, however. Once the reader starts to realise just how much lying is going on, the novel becomes darkly hilarious and very entertaining. It is profoundly cynical throughout. As an example, on Osnard’s younger days:

He had no craft or qualification, no proven skills outside the golf course and the bedroom. What he understood best was English rot, and what he needed was a decaying English institution that would restore to him what other decaying institutions had taken away. His first thought was Fleet Street. He was semi-literate and unfettered by principle. He had scores to settle. On the face of it he was perfectly cut out to join the new rich media class.

Ultimately, geopolitics consists of many flawed humans with incomplete information attempting to survive and promote their preferred ends. It is thus profoundly chaotic. Le Carré conveys this in an appealing, deadpan fashion. show less

"You know what you are going to get when you pick up a Le Carré novel" i wrote after reading The Russian House last year. Now I am not so sure after reading [The Tailor of Panama]published in 1996. In previous books I have read, le Carré's stories are set in the culture of operational British Spies, with just as much attention paid to office politics as to the adventures of the spies themselves. Usually any violence or assassinations take place outside of the narrative and it is the effect these events have on the professional spies controlling their operatives, that are important to the narrative. Certainly the British spies are very much old school in fact many of them went to the same school; you know the ones that produce many of show more our Tory politicians. They all play the game however ruthless it maybe, in a rather closed world, seemingly for the good of the country, they are honourable men doing their best and although the reader might pick up a wiff of irony he will not encounter the satire which permeates The Tailor of Panama.

Harry Pendel is the Tailor of Panama working as a bespoke tailor in the city of Panama. A refugee from Saville Row in London he has established a very British institutional clothing store for those people with money who want to buy the best suits in town. Most of the top politicians are dressed by Harry Pendel and he routinely travels to the President of Panama's residence to fit him out. He is a model employer and his premises cater to cloth and flatter all the men who want the best, however Harry is in debt, a bad investment in an upcountry rice farm has drained his resources. Le Carré's character portrait of Harry Pendel and his world is masterly, his ability to flatter his customers, but also command their respect makes for an entertaining first few chapters. His position as an outsider with a way in to the heady political machinations of Panama city, along with his money problems make him a perfect target for the British Intelligence Services. Andrew Osnard newly posted to the British Embassy sees his chance to enhance his career and make a lot of money.

Harry takes some persuading, but Osnard soon has him hooked and from then on the adventures begin in a highly sexed up world of political manoeuvring. There are assassination attempts, suicides, femme fatales, revolutionaries and counter revolutionaries with Harry at the centre of it all. The Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese are all vying to ensure they can control their access to the Panama canal. The press barons in England and America are working behind the scenes, while officers in the British Intelligence service are thinking of ways to make money.

Le Carré seems to have lost all respect for intelligence services whose aim was to keep the world safe or to further national interests, they are all crooks and fly-by nights. Perhaps it is because his story is set in the volatile world of Panama city, but more likely it is a complete loss of integrity: a world going to seed with the biggest and most powerful liars and managers playing the game. It makes for a novel that ups the octane, moving into spy-thriller territory. An entertaining read and Harry Pendel is one of le Carrés best creations, but I missed the more ironical, gentile, more rounded approach of previous reads by this author, 3.5 stars. show less

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.

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.

Perfectly fine, but in the end I never managed to get into this one very well at all. A lot of nothing happened through most of it. Some very decent satire, though.

I enjoyed this novel for its mix of espionage, humour and thrill. One can't help but feel sorry for Harry Pendel, caught in his web of lies but fundamentally good, trapped in a world that does him no favours and for which he is ill equipped to survived. I also liked the cast of supporting characters, from Andy, greedy and mischievous, Maltby, surprising and opportunistic, Marta, mysterious and faithful. All are well developed, enticing and engaging.
The plot did have lengthy bits but never once was I bored. The politics were relatively easy to follow and I enjoyed learning more about a country I knew nothing about.
Not one of LeCarré's best, but certainly a good example of this work, and an entertaining read.

Read during Fall 2002

It is difficult to figure out which person is lying the most. Perhaps Harry Pendel, a successful tailor in Panama City, who lives in a world of his own creation as the successful protegé of the non-existsent Mr. Braithwaite. There is also Andy Osnard, a member of the Brittish Intellegence Service and always looking to make a fast buck. The two feed off each other's false worlds but their actions have ramifications in the bigger world of the Canal Zone and Panamanian politics. A different kind of spy novel from LeCarre but still well crafted and full of the moral ambiguity of the post Cold War intellegence service.