<div><p><em>It was a perfectly ordinary Friday afternoon in tropical Panama until Andrew Osnard barged into Harry Pendel’s shop asking to be measured for a suit.</em></p><p><i><br></i>
So begins John le Carré’s dazzling new novel set in contemporary Panama, reluctant host and future owner of the second largest gateway to world trade.<br>
Harry Pendel, Jewish-Irish foster child, is the charismatic proprietor and guiding genius of Pendel and Braithwaite Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of Savile Row, through whose doors passes everyone who is anyone in Central America. </p><p>Andrew Osnard, mysterious and fleshly, is an Old Etonian and spy. His secret mission is two-pronged: to keep a watchful eye on the political manoeuvrings leading up to the American handover of the Panama Canal at midday on 31st December 1999; and to secure for himself the immense private fortune that has until now churlishly eluded him.</p><p>And Osnard knows more about Pendel than Pendel knows himself . . .</p><p><br>
Already acclaimed as one of the most skilled, entertaining and important novelists writing today, John le Carré has written a book of such poignant drama, perfect characterisation, humour and sadness that it will be regarded as a masterpiece.</p>
<p>**</p><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3>
<p>John le Carré, the greatest spy novelist of the Cold War era, continues his post-Cold War quest to define the genre he helped perfect. The classic spy novel was essentially a story of good (England, the United States) vs. evil (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union), in which good more or less prevailed. <em>The Tailor of Panama</em> is something else entirely: a spy novel with no spies in which the bad guys reap most of the rewards. It is also a viciously funny satire. The novel is set in Panama, where a plot is in place to make void the Panama Treaty, which would return control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians in 1999. At the center of events is Harry Pendel, the tailor of the title. Coerced into working for British Intelligence, he concocts out of whole cloth a left-wing movement with the goal of luring the American military to do the dirty work--invade Panama à la 1989 and nullify the treaty. From the characters to the setting, le Carré has succeeded in setting new parameters for an old genre. </p>
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