Casino Royale (James Bond Novels)

I first read CASINO ROYALE, as well as a few others in the series, while in my early teens - back when I'd only read stories in order to immerse myself in the plot - to find out what happens next, essentially - not caring a jot about writing style, descriptive detail, or character development. Back then, I found it curious that the Bond of the books was so different from the Bond of the movies (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER being the contemporary releases of that time.) I wondered, for instance, why the James Bond in the movies didn't have black hair and why, in the books, he wasn't funny at all...Indeed - well, so much for my pre-adolescent review.

Now, more than 20 years later, indulging on a whim, I'm reading the series again. And I must say I am thoroughly enjoying it - but not for the same reasons I had when I was young. I'm actually nearly through it in its entirety - and must say that, though they're all very good, CASINO ROYALE has a palpable raw depth rarely visible in the rest. I can now see and appreciate the fine quality of the writing, the extraordinary sculpturing of an ideal action hero, and the magical lure that has begotten the most well-known, long-standing film series of all time. And, yes, these books are great fun!

"M," head of the British Secret Service, hands Commander Bond what appears on the surface to be a posh assignment: thwarting an enemy Russian spy, Le Chiffre, in his attempt to win an exorbitant 50 million francs - KGB funds which he had lost through an ill-advised investment in a chain of brothels. Agent 007 lives an intensely hard lifestyle, and he's known to be the best gambler in the Service. He's therefore assigned to break Le Chiffre's bank at the baccarat tables of the Casino Royale, in the French Riviera.

SMERSH, the Russian Secret Service in charge of all diplomatic killings for the Fatherland, is right on to Le Chiffre. Though he's very desperate, Le Chiffre happens to be a first rate baccarat player. He plans on winning that 50 million francs at any cost, employing a couple of potent assassins enforced to help see it through.

Though James Bond must face Le Chiffre as a force of one at the baccarat table, he has his own team of assistants: Rene' Mathis of the French branch, American CIA agent Felix Leiter, and the beautiful Vesper Lynd of the S branch of British Intelligence. Vesper is officially the very first Bond girl - and she utterly mesmerizes our master spy: he sees her as an entity of wonder.

Truly, this story does not own any of the qualities that could easily be made into a movie. There's plenty of tension, plenty of action, and quite a lot of romance to boot. However the tension is mainly in the climatic card game, which, minus the author's excellent descriptive prose, would appear tedious on the screen; the action is definitely intense, but includes a harrowing torture scene which should not be witnessed by the squeamish; and, well, without the advantage of being able to follow the thoughts of our hero, a film version of this story might easily cause the romance to appear as carelessly thrown in.

Vesper's an intriguing Bond Girl, though. Her fateful role exacts a twisted surprise ending, which inevitably sets the tone and atmosphere of Bond's future relationships with women. This is perhaps the only book of the series wherein Bond takes a good, hard look at the moral portents of his own place in his profession - sort of a teasing glimpse into the window of his heart - but only that peek - as it seems thereafter shut fast and hard. Keen, sharp, dark and moody: James Bond remains ever the quintessential Man of Mystery.


What Every Man Wants To Be...   March 12, 2004
J. H. Minde (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York)
27 out of 31 found this review helpful

CASINO ROYALE introduced the world to James Bond, and James Bond introduced the world to a style of living which, although fictional, is just SO attainable---just---that there isn't a man who hasn't tried or at least dreamed.

Ian Fleming's Bond is spare and tough, a kind of Spartan in a sack suit. In that regard he has influenced the cinematic Bond, but has never been the same character as portrayed by Connery, Lazenby, et. al. Fleming's writing is uncomplicated but finely crafted, and the story is dark and mordant with a strong central thread of tension and suspense which never wavers.

This earliest novel has an almost 1930's feel to it, with a healthy dose of immediate postwar Cold War paranoia. Things are never as they seem. CASINO ROYALE immediately introduces us to two of Bond's favorite preoccupations---women and casinos. Bond is paired with the incredibly sensuous Vesper Lynd, and the two set out to foil the plans of LeChiffre, the Russian agent fallen on hard times who is desperately trying to recoup some Moscow-funded business losses to the tune of 50 mil.

Bond beats LeChiffre at the gaming table and then LeChiffre beats Bond, who is naked and tied to a chair at the time. While the language is restrained, Fleming leaves us in no doubt as to our hero's predicament. Unlike his modern-day counterparts, Fleming doesn't have to be cartoonish or pornographic to draw us a prose-picture, and that, more than anything, recommends his work.

After so many years of being out-of-print in the U.S., Penguin finally had the verve and the nerve to release the complete Fleming ouevre in an attractive set with some really dynamic cover art.What a pleasure to see the Master returned at last.


Enter James Bond   December 28, 2000
IA (San Francisco, California United States)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

It's hard to believe the book is nearly 50 years old but it is. This novel marks the entrance of James Bond into the world. The real Bond doesn't have much to do with his movie counterparts--he's colder, more ruthless and has no charm or humor. He's also a deeper character. 10 years later at the end of the Bond cycle he would grow and become more humorous and personable, (See "You Only Live Twice") but here meeting him may be like taking a cold shower if you're only familiar with Connery, Moore, and etc.

As the prototype novel of the Bond series "Casino Royale" has less action and more concentrated violence than the future books. Its mood is claustrophobic but it's grasp of defined character is somewhat airy. Bond is not quite fully fleshed out--what we can grasp is that he believes himself a professional but often loses or comes close in both love and business. He speaks like a misoygnist but falls very badly for women; he plays cards like a pro but needs to be bailed out. The other characters are also compelling--Leiter and Mathis are agreeable national stereotypes, while LeChiffre is the first of Fleming's great villains--subtly monstrous and grotesque to the point of being king devils, not people. Fleming never wrote a convincing female character until he spoke in first person for the heroine of "The Spy Who Loved Me," but Vesper Lynd is one dimensional in a non-shameful way.

Fleming's style isn't yet fully formed, but it's still evident. No one has written better scenes of torture (And this undoubtedly one of the most harrowing torture scenes you'll ever read) or card games than Fleming, and as an action writer on the whole he was undoubtedly a master, and deserves to be acknowledged as one. At the moment his literary reputation is quite low. Fleming was hardly the reactionary super-evil crypto-fascist, rabid-racist, hyper-misognyist, ultra-snob that some have claimed him to be (In books full of astoundingly stupid errors and lazy readings), and the coming years will hopefully force many to fully note his many flaws and his considerable strengths. He deserves the same ranking as Chandler or Hammett--minor artists, but artists none-the-less.

The biggest difference from the later novels is the degree of moral exploration Bond undergoes. The novel's supposed climax is engineered to come very early, and Fleming daringly gives an entire chapter for Bond to afterwards think--he actively questions his job and the role he plays in the entire Free World/Soviet struggle. Beyond that he questions the nature of evil. After CR, Bond never attempts this sort moral exploration again, and the future novels as a result aren't as deep. There's a reason for this....

Fleming's master stroke was his realization that a convincing adventure tale in the spy genre could not arise from the conflict between the ideologies of the Soviets and the West. It was too much of a gray area and Fleming did not want to be a political writer--he wanted to create myths and fairy tales for adults, and he turned out to be the best writer of the century in doing so. So Fleming decided that Bond would not fight against Communist spies but rather the organization of terror that made them spy--evil fantasy villains--so he created SMERSH as Bond's opponent. He would use them as villains until the lessening of cold war tension enabled him to create an even less political replacement--SPECTRE.

The first part of the novel thus details Bond fighting against Communist agents, but Fleming builds the climax early. Afterwards he builds another tale dealing with the ramifications of the first. During this he has Bond question his role, and by the end, with its shocker finish, Bond has renounced the role he has questioned and decided to from now on go after the force that makes spies spy. Having created an all-purpose group of fairy-tale villains for Bond to fight in future novels, Fleming has no more need for any further moral exploration by Bond--the knight doesn't bother wondering whether he should slay the dragon.

That I think is why Fleming's friend Raymond Chandler always said that he had never bettered "Casino Royale" and to an extent I agree--the novel marks the point where Bond is in between the realistic world of betrayals and moral ambiguity and the thrilling world of surrealistically evil villains and larger-than-life exloits. Bond never returns to this point again, and we are deprived of the pleasure of seeing him walk that edge.


Bond, James Bond   December 12, 1999
Evan Salas (Weston, Fl)
14 out of 17 found this review helpful

James Bond, the British Secret Service's most expert gambler, travels undercover to the French Riviera. His mission: to break the bank of "Le Chiffre", a French gangster secretly in the employ of the KGB. Joined by Vesper, a beautiful spy, Bond plays Le Chiffre for a fortune at the luxurious Casino Royale, raising the stakes sky-high even as Le Chiffre's assassins close in. This novel first introduced James Bond to the world, and its conclusion is perhaps the most shocking of any of the books in the series. A great book for 007 fans to read! Buy this book when it is back in stock!


The Enigma That Is Bond   November 18, 2006
Bill Slocum (Norwalk, CT USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

In 1953 Dwight Eisenhower became president, the hydrogen bomb debuted, Stalin died, the Rosenbergs were executed, and a new hero arrived in time for the iciest phase of the Cold War. Ruthless, hard, loner-by-choice James Bond debuted that year in Ian Fleming's "Casino Royale," as someone much different than he was in decades to come.

This Bond doesn't employ gadgets, doesn't shoot his gun, and has odd feelings about women. Meeting one here, he notes in her eyes "a touch of ironical disinterest which, to his annoyance, he found he would like to shatter, roughly." Yeah, I can totally see Roger Moore in that role!

Bond's lack of likeability is a key and singular strength in "Casino Royale," set in the mythical French port town of Royale-les-Eaux where Bond has been sent to outduel a KGB operative named Le Chiffre - at cards. If Bond's successful, a key Soviet puppet operation in France will go down in bankruptcy and scandal.

As others note in these reviews, not much happens in "Casino Royale." The action scenes are brief and rendered in a low-key, realistic manner. Fleming keeps things humming not with the "Fleming sweep" of a long drawn-out set of varied action sequences that were a hallmark of his later work, but with verisimilitude and an appreciation of his main character's tortured psychology. You smell the late-night sweat around the tables of boule and chemin-de-fer; feel the hangover Bond has trying to acclimate himself in a den of lust and greed.

Fleming's writing would never be quite this good again, in part because he no longer needed to sell Bond to the audience and in part because he treated later Bond volumes as a chore and a joke. Bond in later volumes seemed to mutate from this character into something softer and jollier. Fleming found the metahumor of Bond, and the movies, when they came, added more. So this is the one chance to see Bond as someone serious, a prisoner of the Cold War he ostensibly serves, not without questions even after enduring horrific torture at the hands of Le Chiffre, about what makes him right and others wrong.

"Surround yourself with people, my dear James," suggests a friend. "They are easier to fight for than principles."

But Bond follows this advice to his peril. The last third of the novel loses many, as the main business is long concluded. But it's here that Fleming works his black magic most effectively upon the reader, and on Bond, who finds himself captivated by a woman named Vesper who speaks in riddles and denies him her deeper self even after they've made love. "People are islands," she tells him. "They don't really touch."

Of course, Bond is a perfect counterpart to Vesper that way. Fleming imbues "Casino Royale" with a sort of romantic fatalism that hangs in the air long after the basic but exciting story is done with. It's the same sort of fatalism with which many viewed the world around them in 1953, when the Cold War did not bode so well for the Free World.

Things changed, worldviews brightened, and Bond became a happy bounder with a taste for the good life while that dark core within him, plumbed so well here, would only be hinted at from time to time after. "Casino Royale" may not be the most enjoyable Bond book, but none can match it for its raw, staying power.