The Tailor of Panama Carr?, John Le

A British spy with a gambling problem arrives in Panama needing a win. He finds Harry Pendel — a Savile Row-trained tailor with a invented past, a gift for embroidery (both literal and metaphorical), and clients who run the country. What starts as intelligence gathering becomes something darker: a con within a con, where fabricated secrets about the Panama Canal spark real geopolitical chaos. Le Carré dismantles his own spy genre here, swapping Cold War idealism for post-imperial rot. The prose is sharp, the satire biting, and Panama itself — corrupt, sun-drenched, teetering on the edge — becomes as vivid as any character. This is espionage fiction where the lies matter more than the truth, and everyone's stitching together their own version of reality. For readers who like their thrillers intelligent, morally murky, and laced with dark humor.