Rating: 
Summary: Worst book I've read ever!
Review: Boring, Boring, Boring. Save your money for another book. I hope the movie is better.
Rating:
Summary: A rather dull parody
Review: I had high hopes for this novel after reading a local newspaper review claiming Le Carre writes "spy stories for the intelligent reader." Unfortunately, Le Carre turns what could have been a decent thriller into a rather dull parody. The story starts out with a strong premise: Harry Pendel, tailor to Panama's rich and famous, has a compulsive habit of telling tall tales, which leads to unpredictable mayhem when he gets recruited by a British spy. Instead of the usual James Bond buffoonery --thrilling chases, gratuitous sex, outrageous villains-we get dry British wit and sly social satire. Le Carre demands a certain amount of sophistication from his readers. Historic American-Panama events -- the Canal Treaty, the Carter visit, Operation Just Cause.-are important to the plot but never explained to the uninformed. The book also subtly plays on classic stereotypes - for example, the British spy Andrew Osnard is presented as a drinker, gambler, and womanizer (just like James Bond), but also a fat, gullible comic foil. If the author had put Harry Pendel's just-quirky-enough-to-be-believable character in an straight-up spy thriller, this could have been a great book that managed to balance suspense, humor, and social critique. Instead, Le Carre asks us to believe the British Secret Service would send a 26-year old rookie into Panama to retrieve evidence of an international conspiracy, and then fork over millions of dollars based on the uncollaborated testimony of one ex-con-turned-informant. He surrounded Pendel with characters far too stupid to be seen as anything other than caricatures. The conclusion is so implausible (a secret cadre of Right Wing politios manipulate the media to start a war), it only be read as slapstick satire, ala "Dr. Strangelove". Unfortunately, for me at least, the jokes just weren't funny.
Rating:
Summary: Worst book I've read this year
Review: My first and last Le Carre book is The Tailor of Panama. I expected a spy novel. I expected a plot. Instead, Tailor is a book entirely about an author showing us how clever he can be by poking fun at American, British, and, especially, latin people. If you read and liked Catch 22, you may like Tailor. I hated Catch 22. With both books, I kept waiting for something to happen: nothing does. And the humour in both is similar: smart-alec dialog that quickly becomes irritating and is never funny. The characters are universally annoying. It's not a spy-thriller and it's not funny. It is almost unreadable. I look forward to missing the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: A Thriller Ought to Thrill
Review: You've heard of books you can't put down? For me, Le Carre's "The Tailer of Panama" was a book I couldn't pick up. Maybe I just don't "get" Le Carre. I've tried a number of his books, but I always find myself waiting for something to happen. And then they end. "The Tailer" was a dreary book with depressing, unpleasant people slogging through each day complaining, lying, and being unhappy. Other reviewers have talked about the comic undertones, but they must have read an edition that included jokes and cartoons between the chapters. My edition didn't. Why does Harry Pendel decide to lie to an international spy? Beats me. It seems like a dumb thing to do, but he does it all through the book for no apparent reason. Why is Andy Osnard foolish enough to believe him without any verification? Beats me. No wonder Andy is getting poor performance evaluations from his superiors. Why is this slow, drab book listed in the "thriller" genre? Beats me. Shouldn't a thriller thrill you? Reading this book was like going for a hike on a drizzly morning with the forecast promising sun and blue sky. But it never comes.
Rating: 
Summary: Tailor of Panama stiches them up.....
Review: John Le Carre paints a colourful picture of a number of eccentric British expatriates in Panama whose lives become entwined with each others and those of their local friends, against the political backdrop of the imminent hand over of the Panama Canal by the USA to Panama. We have Harry Pendel, owner of Pendel and Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of Savile Row, London and presently of Via Espana, Panama City. And then there's Andrew Osnard, from the British Embassy, Old Etonian, womaniser and a spy. Harry of course is no upper class Brit, rather "906017, Pendel, convict and ex-juvenile, delinquent, six years for arson, two and a half served. Taught himself tailoring in the slammer." Self-taught he may have been but as tailor to General Noriega his credibility in Panama is well established and even his devoted wife knows no better. Osnard is a different person altogether, painted as an unattractive man and a bully with a superiority complex. He leans on Pendel with both carrot and stick for inside information on the mood of the people as the ownership of the canal is about to be transferred. The inner con man in Pendel cannot admit that he doesn't know any more than Osnard himself and so he fabricates tales which he thinks will please Osnard. He thus becomes the archetypal intelligence fabricator whilst earning a few bonuses on the side. This is an excellent spy thriller which combines mystery, intrigue, romance, misplaced loyalties, jealousy, revolution and murder. If you know nothing about Panama, the educational value of this book alone makes it well worth reading. "The Tailor of Panama" gives an easy-to-read insight into the country, its people, its history, its two neighbouring oceans and its engineering marvel, the canal.
Rating:
Summary: Great story line engaging read, makes think
Review: I really enjoyed this book in a way. Recently heard its to become a Jamie Curtis movie and flipped, Id say read the book first and enjoy it more, the plot is a bit twisty but simple and its kind of amazing how much of this kind of stuff is probably real in some of the american countries to some exent. Really good pre current events kind of stuff. As a story it seamed a little bit sad, easy to follow and made you want to keep picking it up and finishing, but was also kind of intricate in detail and dynamics of the characters.
Rating:
Summary: A Book to Sleep By
Review: The Tailor of Panama was described as a spy story. After three quarters of the first tape, the story had yet to get to anything to do with spying. It talked about a tailor-well at least the name of the book was right-and described all the customers of the tailor, from British Royalty to Communistic Leaders. It talked of the politics and even had a customer come in to get fitted for a suit. It described the receptionist and how she had gotten the scars on her face. But it never set the scene for a spy story. The book, which was compared to Casablanca, would make interesting reading for someone that enjoys the intricacies of politics and lots of in-depth details. It is a very dry read.
Rating: 
Summary: A cut above the others
Review: Both Le Carre and his central character - Harry Pendel, demonstrate that they are a cut above the others in their respective trades. Le Carre, just when we were beginning to fear that he had lost his touch, reshapes and retools the spy-thriller genre with this book - 'The Tailor of Panama'. It's not that this is his best book, it's just that it takes a totally different approach - satire - and has a lighter feel (at least initially) than his previous darker, sombre and moody novels. As for Harry Pendel, he's the tops in his field - No, not tailoring, definitely not spying, but... lying. Harry a British expatriate Jewish tailor to the rich and famous in Panama City is also a daydreamer and schemer. But most of all he is someone who simply wants to please others. He tries "to say the right things at all times, even if the right things were in one place and the truth was in another". Harry, we learn had an incredible talent for making things up. This, we all learned as children, will get you into trouble. It should not come as a surprise then to read that after creating an elaborate world of largely imaginary dangers and plots, with hints of coming revolutions, and passing this on to the British through his handler -Andy Osnard, Harry gets into trouble. What kind and who else and how it plays out provides the surprising conclusion to the book. Suffice to say that the moral lesson in the children's story about crying "Wolf, Wolf" too often has a bearing here and Harry's tales become self fulfilling prophecies that pull in people far and wide with geopoltical repurcussions for Panama, Britain and the US.
Rating:
Summary: Scintillating Satire From The Spy Master
Review: This is spy satire at its finest. Le Carre tauntingly dares us to laugh at others and our own foibles. Thusly: "When Andrew Osnard barged into Harry Pendel's shop asking to be measured for a suit," begins John le Carré's 16th novel, "Pendel was one person. By the time he barged out again Pendel was another." With that, we're off to the races -- 332 pages of nuanced drama and tragicomic wit from one of the masters of modern storytelling. If anyone thought that le Carré was tiring, or still casting around for his role now that the Cold War is supposedly over, "The Tailor of Panama" will quickly set all and sundry straight. (I'm sinking my teeth into this espionage master's newest release, "The Constant Gardener", now.) In Tailor, an orphan brought by up his Jewish uncle in London's East End, Harry learned his sewing skills while doing time for arson. He later perfected them as the Pendel in the house of Pendel & Braithwaite Co. Limitada, tailors to royalty, formerly of Savile Row, and now of Panama City. The trouble is, there never was a Braithwaite, or royal appointments, or even Savile Row. Pendel simply has an extraordinary talent -- a "fluence" -- for making things up. "It was improving on people. It was cutting and shaping them until they became understandable members of his internal universe." The one true thing about Harry is that he is indeed the tailor to Panama's rich and famous. This fact makes him an ideal "joe" for Osnard, a young, amoral operative on the make -- a Nick Leeson of the MI6 -- and for the British secret service, which has persuaded itself that running a covert operation to reassert Western control of the Panama Canal is just the thing to get it back into America's good graces. In "The Tailor of Panama," le Carré writes from the inside out. His characters emerge in all their folly, grandeur and ambivalence. And the author's shrewd ear for the vernacular is worth the price of admission alone. Close to 70, le Carré is still, as he remarked a couple of years ago, "fizzing with fiction." His fans, and English literature, are the better for it. As the author himself once mentioned in an interview; "I think the ones [his novels] I want to be buried with are "A Perfect Spy" and this one. I have the most affection for the characters in those stories, and somehow, they came the closest to the bone. And the laughs. It's wonderful to meet one's friends after they've read "The Tailor of Panama" and find them grinning all over their faces for a change, instead of being plunged into depression." A superb satirical espionage thriller.
Rating:
Summary: Le Carre writes about people
Review: Le Carre does not write primarily about espionage. He certainly does not write about action. Le Carre wries about people, brilliant menageries of people, in-depths about people. Once again he creates a collection of fascinating plodders and oddballs. I did some months in Panama. That was a few years before Operation Just Cause, but somehow the ambiance rings true. One frustration: no map! In the next edition, please include a map.
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