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Review by Roy Neel
The venerable spy novel has not been the same since the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the dismantling of diabolical weapons of mass destruction brandished by conspiratorial gangs of madmen posing as high-ranking U.S. and Soviet officials.
In the good old bad days, a very real nuclear paranoia gripped the country, and cookie-cutter novelists created swashbuckling characters to exploit it. John le Carré is the master of a subtler, more complex style, creating painfully human characters and enough nuance in one story to last most spy novelists a lifetime. It is some feat to have arguably written the single best spy novel ever -- The Spy Who Came in from the Cold -- and the best spy series ever. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People have not been improved upon since George Smiley bagged Karla and disappeared forever to retire the ultimate achievement in this literary form.
Le Carré is a clever satirist, deflating the pompous bureaucrats in Britain's intelligence service and regularly unmasking the shifting policies of an entire nation without a global purpose beyond a preservation of its flabby institutions. This gives le Carré staying power while others drift about looking for a new theme to exploit. Even in their least intriguing settings, le Carré's stories are rich stews that may not always thrill, but never disappoint.
Along comes The Tailor of Panama, le Carré's sixteenth and latest take on the absurdity of men and women out of synch with the world around them, spooks dispatched by bored home agencies with little better to do than to watch over the transfer of the Panama Canal, traditional Brits trying to establish a domestic foothold in the land of Noriega.
Harry Pendel, proprietor of Pendel & Brathwaite Limitada, is a transplanted Savile Row craftsman with disarming access to Panama's top government officials, leading thugs, and would-be revolutionaries. Harry's shop assistant is his mistress, a disfigured anarchist in waiting; his wife Louisa correctly fears she is becoming a "pious perfect God-fearing Zonian bitch."
Harry Pendel also has a past and a problem. He is not what he appears to be, even to his wife, and he is deeply in debt, having been conned into a dubious real estate venture. Enter Andrew Osnard, recently arrived from British intelligence, late 20s, cynical and seductive, though, thankfully, not hard and lean -- le Carré's spooks usually look more like James Baker than James Bond, in Osnard's case: "large bodied," "podgy." In a long, deliciously manipulative passage Osnard exposes the vulnerable Pendel's past and offers the seemingly hapless tailor a solution to both his identity and his financial crisis. ". . . I know who you aren't," Osnard reveals to Harry. "No cause for panic or alarm. I love it. Every bit of it. Wouldn't be without it for the world . . . I'm bonus. Answer to your prayers."
The hilarious plot that follows owes more to Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana than to the dark, sinister themes of early le Carré masterpieces. Pendel becomes the prolific spy Buchan, ostensibly using his clients' fittings to extract alarming revelations about sinister plots among corrupt Panamanians to turn Canal Zone politics into private honeypots. Osnard delivers this product into the receptive, and gullible, hands of his London superiors who, in the best le Carré tradition, stumble and cover up, and, well, no more should be said. Getting to the dissembling end of le Carré characters is much of the joy of these books.
But, unlike the less talented and more pedestrian spy novelists, le Carré entertains with the language, not the Lugar. Pick a page, any page, from The Tailor of Panama -- or any other le Carré novel -- and you'll find passages that do not require bullets to delight and tease.
Until John le Carré can justify the resurrection of George Smiley, the pleasures of The Tailor of Panama will more than suffice.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.