Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes the Short Answer is Simply Too Short
Review: Especially relevant after the number of journalistic scandals involving "once-source" information that have occurred worldwide, John LeCarre, in his most cynical novel to date, scathingly takes "the epiocracy" to task for what he perceives is a trend towards the inappropriate interpretation of factual information. Of course, that pitfall isn't all that hard to tumble into, considering how the major spy organs of the West continually recruit from the creme de la creme of academic circles. Because the creme de la creme are practically bred in the ways of diplomacy from their childhood on up, they are indeed valuable in just about every aspect of spying except one: Determining exactly how the lay of the land will affect policymaking in the short run. It's as if Marie Antoinette was the only candidate to play La Femme Nikita, and she's not about to go getting her hands dirty. This book, however, comes highly recommended.
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Summary: my opinion is purely positive
Review: After winning the cold war we - here in the eastern part of Europe can enjoy the brilliant genre of le Carre in our language.That is the victory itself or part of it. The Tailer is genuinly new and powerful. I have not finished it yet but I could not help to put some words in to this file with the voice of recognition and happiness.Congratulations to the Author and to the Readers too! Louis Benda
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Summary: Great characters, nicely written, smart and funny.
Review: Le Carre, in The Tailor of Panama, creates some very dimensional characters indeed, and his dialog skills are impressive as always. His Brits, in particular, are authentic and I found myself attaching familiar British acting voices to these creations. His use of the short, incomplete sentence works well. Economy of words. Reader fills in what's missing. Lends credibility, sharpens the mind's image, all that. On the issue of suspense, I wouldn't call this example exemplary (not quite the page-turner one might expect of a spy novel) but it is fun and smart, and that in itself is a good deal of the battle as I see it.
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Summary: An absolute joy to read - the writing is dazzling
Review: John Le Carre writes such brilliant, snappy dialogue I could almost scream. The story is fine, and the premise is humorous and clever, but I couldn't put this book down because of the prose. Andy Osnard's words still ring in my ears!
Rating: 
Summary: Not LeCarre's best effort, but an enjoyable book.
Review: This book is a departure for LeCarre. He paints in much broader strokes here. One result is that this is a much quicker read than most of his which require more attention to nuance. There is more tendency to caricature than character, but I am generally in favor of any book which reveals the Intelligence Community to be people by fools and charlatans.
Rating: 
Summary: The Tailor of Panama is Our Man in Havana
Review: The Tailor of Panama shows again that Mr. Le Carre lacks the most important quality in a writer of fiction...imagination. It seems that since acquiring fame, Mr. Le Carre has decided not to think too much about plot, but rather copy whatever there is to copy, ad a bit of eccentricity to the characters, and voila. The Tailor of Panama is Our Man in Havana, much like The Perfect Spy is a retelling of Kim Philby's story, a story that has been told many times. I, at least, look for originality in plot and premise. Mr. Le Carre has become a comformist.
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Summary: In defense of this book
Review: i think perhaps many of the reviews here miss the point of this novel. It is not, I agree, Le Carre's best thriller. It is instead a satire, not about Panama, but about the propensity we all have to believe our own lies, and those whose lies justify actions we want to take anyway. It has been said here that he misrepresents Panama while sparing the west(England), also that le Carre is tired and out of ideas since the cold war ended. Far from the truth. His writing style may be slow for those raised on TV, but it has a point. His last 3 novels(Our Game, The Night Manager, and this one) can be seen together as a manysided indictment of the West at the end of the Cold War. They are among his best novels as literature, and should be read not as thrillers, but as examinations of wasted lies, of the arrogance of the West and it's willingness to sacrifice innocents for political and economic conveniences, of the corruption of money at the center of our intitutions at the century's end. Thank you Mr. Le Carre, for doing more than sitting back and gloating on the so called victory of the West.
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Summary: The master strikes again; a fiendishly delightful read
Review: As a writer myself, I experience a variety of feelings when reading the works of others. Sometimes it's a great deal of frustration and impatience, occasionally some anger, and less often then I'd like, real pleasure. Rarely, though, do I feel jealousy, but such is the case with The Tailor of Panama. It's that good. Several words spring to mind when talking about the spy novels of LeCarre: difficult, impenetrable, obtuse. Honestly now - how many have you actually read through to the conclusion? I suspect that the circuitous construction and non-linear plot progressions are deliberate, intended not so much to precisely tell a story as to convey a feeling, that of actually being involved in some tortuously complex web of deceit and doublecross. After all, if George Smiley himself is confused, discomfited and suspicious, why shouldn't we experience similar vagueness as we follow his exploits? In that regard, The Tailor of Panama represents a significant departure for the universally-acknowledged master of the espionage thriller, because it is easily the most accessible of his novels. That's good news in itself, but it gets better, because this singular gem of a novel may also be his best written. It is also based on a unique premise. How to put this without blowing the surprises, of which there are many... One of the worst fears of an intelligence case officer is that the asset he is controlling is a double agent loyal to the other side. That concept is central to more spy stories than it is possible to count, as is the notion of a mole in your own organization. In The Tailor of Panama, LeCarre presents a new dilemma, a situation that, at least in my limited familiarity with the genre, hasn't been tackled before. Which is all I plan to say about it. The first part of the book is actually humorous, as LeCarre casts a wry eye - and ear - at the bombast of expatriate Britishers trying to maintain traditional civility in uncivil lands. In this case, that ! kind of overblown pomposity has implanted itself within British intelligence, with disastrous results; the last part of the book is anything but funny, as we witness the degree of catastrophe that can flow from the kind of carelessness engendered by an out-of-control sense of self-importance. Set against the backdrop of the Panama Canal's impending handover to the local citizenry, it's a great story, full of huge but understated surprises and soundly buttressed by brilliant and controlled writing that is a joy to read and, for many passages, to re-read. Absent the kind of dizzying complexities that require such an investment in other of his novels, The Tailor of Panama drags us willingly into intrigue gone very wrong even as we wince at the awful events that precipitate out of the collision of one man's towering arrogance and another's desperate vulnerability. One only hopes that the character of anti-hero Andrew Osnard returns in a future volume to wreak more havoc for our amusement.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing -- Certainly Nothing Special
Review: Le Carre for me has always been a wonderful challenge -- a difficult-to-read, disjointed writing style balanced by his mastery as a storyteller. This is the first book of his for which the annoying outweighed the pleasurable. Clearly this is meant as wicked satire, and indeed it is, but the heavyhandedness of the points he makes is grating. Every single character in the book is either amoral or incompetent, or both -- seemingly bent on self-destruction. Le Carre spares no one -- if I were Panamanian, Jewish, black, Indian or Japanese, I'd be offended at the insulting generalizations he heaps upon my people. World-weariness is one thing, but Le Carre writes with the ultra-cynical tone of a man who needs a rest. This story of post-Cold War spies manufacturing a war seems to be a metaphor for his predicament as a writer. On the plus side, no one does the clipped British speech pattern like Le Carre -- Osnard's annoyed "hell's going on's" are classic.
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Summary: The tailor of Panama
Review: John Le Carre is famous for his spy stories, this one is an unconventional type of spy story: the action is indirect, the thoughts are overburdening any action, the real action is little and again described in this indirect way, mixed up with the narrator's thoughts in a surrealistic way. Also Le Carre, introduces a new element: sociological thriller. He expands, criticises the society through the eyes of his tailor, an ex-convict whose world had been tumbling down, but yet found his way to even build a "notorious" reputation as the best tailor of Panama and also raise a family, that seems to be happy before any imminent destru- ction. The fragile world of that family, the un- conventional type of hero for LeCarre and how the world around him evolves, are elements never touch ed before by LeCarre. Icons and descriptions are very clear and the language of LeCarre still elit- istic. The flashbacks (perhaps derived from his "A Perfect spy") are of a small extent and do not deviate from the original story, offering more psychological background for the actions of his major heroes. He also offers political thriller e- lements in order to strengthen the spy story. It is not the pure spy story thing. It's a psycholo- gical thriller on a spy story that becomes complex even for the trained reader. And as the pages pass and you start knowing the heroes, their thoughts and their actions, the action element comes in and somewhere before the end, in a crescendo of sur- real scenes and a complexity and depth in the psy- chological chararacterisation of all heroes involved in the story, the story sums up rather fast, like someone is hurrying to collect up all the strings. This is true of course, since in all spy stories and political thrillers, the cover-up is as fast as the speed of light. What LeCarre is not doing, costs him the loss of a 100% perfect book (he is not setting a pure spy story like let us say "The Russia house") but makes the reader understand what means to know to handle the words, to be a maestro writer, cynical yet pictorous, narrative and yet nerve hitting (through LeCarre's indirect way of setting the scenes). LeCarre with this book becomes more intelectual and targets the braniac type of readers, but the burdening of a spy story loses the excitement and brings more disbelief. Do you think his idea was to make us feel that way ? Maybe we should take the above under real consideration, if we also take under account that LeCarre was an MI6 agent (or SIS if you like) and also criticise his book as a docu- mentary of the fall of Panama to the hands of ex- ternal forces. I wouldn't hesitate to call this book as a twist to LeCarre's style and also a re- ference point book, since my expectations after that book are of a new, pure spy story novel from him.
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