I’ve been on a bit of a James Bond kick lately. Until recently I’d never seen the Sean Connery Bond movies much to the chagrin of some of my friends. I had just never gotten around to it. When I was growing up Roger Moore was James Bond and while I enjoyed his portrayal as a kid, it didn’t set world on fire for me. However, I recently watched the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. This has in turn has reignited my interest in all things Bond, James Bond. And being the bibliophile that I am, has lead me to Ian Fleming’s original novels.
In Casino Royale, the first in the series, Monsieur Le Chiffre ("the cipher"), the treasurer of a Soviet-backed trade union in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, is running a baccarat game in the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, France, in order to recover union money he lost in a failed chain of brothels.
Expert baccarat player James Bond (British secret agent 007) is assigned the defeat of Le Chiffre, in the hope that his gambling debts will provoke Soviet espionage agency SMERSH to kill him. Add in Bond Girl/Femme Fatale Vesper Lynd and a few twists and turns and that’s basically what you get.
For those weaned on the film series (especially the aforementioned film version with Daniel Craig) this novel is going to be surprisingly sedate and down to earth. This is definitely Bond in his most formative state and Fleming seems to be feeling his way through the story as much as his main character. All the familiar Bond tropes – the slam bang opening action sequence, the gadgets, the suave personality, quips, and serial womanizing are not in evidence. This Bond is tentative, business-like, brutish and somewhat naïve. I’ve heard that Fleming became influenced by the film series as it developed and its more fantastical elements crept into later novels, but here we have a simple, low-key introduction to the character of James Bond and as such it’s probably one of the most realistic stories in the Bond canon.
For those used to the non-stop action and globetrotting of the films, that realism is going to be hard to take in places. The centerpiece of the novel is the baccarat game and long tedious passages are given over to explaining the intricacies of that card game. The few moments of action can be counted on one hand. However, when they do come, they are sudden, striking and give real weight and character complications to the story. Which is as it should be. Good spy stories are about intrigue, subterfuge, blinds and double blinds. Action is usually a result of something going wrong and should be surprising and have consequence.
While I enjoy the modern Bond, I wonder if he’s not a character of a certain time and place? Part of the appeal of Casino Royale for me is the cold war themes and the portrait of post-war Europe; there is real gravitas to an agent and agency of a humbled old world empire caught between the emerging U.S. and Soviet super-powers and finding its way in the new world order. That is something that is lost in the modern version. What is Bond’s place in the post-cold war era? Today he’s just a generic super secret agent.
I know this version is short lived as the series became more and more cartoonish as it progressed, but at least in Casino Royale, Fleming evokes the fear and tensions of that moment in history and a character figuring out his place in it.
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