The Tailor of Panama, John le Carre
The Tailor of Panama, John le Carre
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The Tailor of Panama

Author: John le Carré

Narrator: John le Carré

Abridged: 6 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/04/2000


Synopsis

"Le Carre remains far in front in his field, a startlingly up-to-date storyteller who writes as well about the shadows around the power elite as anyone alive."
-Publishers Weekly

Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption.  It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.  

Seldom has the weight of politics descended so heavily on such a tiny and unprepared nation.  And seldom has the hidden eye of the British Intelligence selected such an unlikely champion as Harry Pendel - a charmer, a dreamer, an evader, a fabulist and presiding genius to the house of Pendel & Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of London and presently of Panama City.

Yet there is a logic to the spies' choice, for everybody who is anybody in Cental America passes through Pendel's doors.  He dresses politicos and crooks and conmen.  His fitting room hears more confidences than the priest's confessional.  And when Harry Pendel doesn't hear things as such - well, he hears them anyway, by other means.

In a thrilling, hilarious AudioBook, le Carre once again effortlessly expands the borders of the spy story to bring us a magnificent entertainment straight out of the pages of tomorrow's history.

About John le Carre

Fiction imitating real life seems to be an apt mantra for British born author, David John Moore Cornwell, or his pen name, John le Carre'. He had a very "un-normal" childhood, having been abandoned by his mother when he was five years old, and his father made and lost fortunes several times by using tricks and schemes, and even landed in jail for insurance fraud. le Carre' was reunited with the mother he never knew when he was 21. Unbeknownst to him, he developed his fascination with secret lives from his observation of his father's unsavory lifestyle.

le Carre' studied and received a degree in modern languages after a few "bumps in the road" along the way. He joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army stationed in Allied-occupied Austria, serving as a German language interrogator, then worked covertly for the British Secret Service, M-15 as a spy to detect Soviet agents. He taught at Eton College while he was an M-15 officer. He ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephones, and supervised break-ins. He was encouraged to write by other authors, writing his first novel, Call for the Dead in 1961. In 1960, he had transferred to M-16, the foreign intelligence service. His cover for that position was Secretary of the British Embassy at Bonn, and later Hamburg. It was at that time that he wrote, A Murder of Quality, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. He assumed his pen name when he wrote, since officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

le Carre's novels include: The Looking Glass, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Smiley's People, The Little Drummer Girl, The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama, The Constant Gardner, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor. All of the John le Carre' novels were adapted for film or television.


Reviews

Goodreads review by George on April 25, 2024

I have enjoyed previous spy thrillers by John le Carré, so perhaps it was just me, and my distracted circumstances while reading this book, but I found it to be dull and rather a slog. Somehow I forced myself to finish it, imagining that it had to get better. It did not.......more

Goodreads review by Nigeyb on February 09, 2020

Between February 2017 and September 2017 I read the entire George Smiley series. Having reached the end of the series, I was left wondering about John le Carré's life and work, and whether to read other books by him, and so I read ‘John le Carré: The Biography’ by Adam Sisman in April 2018. ‘John le......more

Goodreads review by Philip on May 22, 2014

At the end of The Tailor Of Panama John Le Carré acknowledges his debt to a previous work that presented a similar theme, Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana. Both books are about the oxymoron that we call intelligence, so often self-contradictory because the label is only useful when there’s a lack o......more

Goodreads review by Maria on April 21, 2020

Gostei muito desta sátira hilariante sobre o impotente funcionamento britânico em relação aos assuntos estrangeiros. Todo o jogo de corrupção, espionagem e mentira. E toda a informação verídica por detrás da ficção deu para aprender muita coisa e fez-me pesquisar ainda mais sobre o assunto.......more

Goodreads review by Kristin on March 17, 2012

I picked up The Tailor of Panama because I had been overwhelmed and bowled-over by the awesomeness of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Half Price Books did not have a copy of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I read TTSS on the plane from Europe, and the plot reached out to me and entangled me in its......more


Quotes

Praise for John le Carré:

"Let me be specific: I think the man deserves the Nobel." —The Globe and Mail

“As the greatest spy novelist of our times John le Carré has always used as the bedrock of his craft the strange ways people are bound to each other.” —Calgary Sun

“In a world where villains can bleed tragedy and heroes may not be so heroic, le Carré is still our keenest arbiter.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“No other contemporary novelist has more durably enjoyed the twin badges of being both well read and well regarded.” —Scott Turow

“Le Carré, always an intriguing blend of patrician and populist, gives voice to all our contempt for hot-money deals.” —The Independent (UK)

“I would suggest immortality for John le Carré…. May he write forever!” —Chicago Tribune

“A literary master for a generation.” —The Observer (UK)

"Furious in action … Takes us by the neck on page one and never lets go." —Chicago Sun-Times