Casino Royale
James Bond 007, Book 1

Ian Fleming

Publisher:
Penguin Books

Release Date:
August 27, 2002

Genres:
Suspense

ISBN:
Print
9780142002025
Kindle
No ISBN

Bookmark Rating:

Reviewed by
G. Greenleaf

Review Posted:
August 2008

For those who enjoy reading, there are certain authors that you’re bound to encounter, nay, expected to read during a lifetime. 

Examples?  

For women, it’s a literary rite of passage to read The Bell Jar.   

For men, it’s expected at some juncture from teen to adult to geriatric that you’re going to read at least one title from Ian Fleming’s 007 series.

It’s more than required.   

It’s encoded in the male DNA.  

Casino Royale (1953) is the first of the fourteen titles in the James Bond series. Introducing the world to literature’s most famous secret agent, Fleming unwittingly unleashed Britain’s greatest cultural post-High Tea, pre-Beatles export. Countless replications soon appeared: by way of movies (Matt Helm, America’s answer to 007, played with a wink and a leer by Dean Martin), television (Get Smart, Secret Agent) and novels-including the parody Hebrew agent, Oy-Oy-7, Israel Bond. 

And while Ian Fleming may not have single-handedly originated the cloak-and-dagger genre (e.g., Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent), he greatly enhanced its proliferation. Perhaps because of this Casino Royale is even listed in 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. 

Its plot? 

Prevent a double agent from delivering microfilm with atomic secrets? 

Thwart a coup d’etat that threatens the balance of world power? 

Tussle with a megalomaniac bent on seizing the world?  

Hardly.   

In fact, by today’s standards, it’s so quaint, that it’s bizarre: it seems a Russian operative stationed in France named Le Chiffre has been using a Communist-controlled trade union’s funds to support his libertine lifestyle of women, gambling and jewelry. Now, short on money, he intends to replace the “borrowed” funds by winning it back at the baccarat table.   

Bond mission is to prevent this-by gambling against him and winning so much of Le Chiffre’s money that his financial misdoings will be discovered and the gambler will be “retired” at the hands of his own Soviet superiors.     

Thus, the big showdown between Bond and Le Chiffre doesn’t take place in some hidden lair but at the eponymous casino: the card battle spanning twenty-five pages occurring in the first half of the book. A later run-in between 007 and the Red-turned-voluptuary, Bond’s subsequent convalescence and a fairly obvious personal betrayal serves as Casino’s languid lengthy denouement.          

Unfortunately, for a generation that’s watched the James Bond films, one can’t help but be disappointed after finishing Casino Royale. Even though one anticipates that the 007 novels written over forty years ago and that sparked the multi-billion dollar movie franchise won’t match the pyrotechnics that are on the screen-and they’re right in this case-one still expects some “Bondisms” along the way to thrill the reader. 

Yet the novel is devoid of testosterone: no gizmos or technical gewgaws, globetrotting, crash-bang grappling or bed’em and forget’em women that we anticipate and crave.  No manning a jetpack or even introducing himself (“Bond, James Bond”) at some black-tie soiree at an exotic locale. (Though one quality the novel has over its cinematic spawn is that it’s told in the third person, giving us the opportunity to get into Bond’s head.)   

A passable read that left the reviewer if not shaken, certainly not stirred, they’ll no doubt eventually delve into another Ian Fleming book.    

Hmm, maybe next time his kiddie classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

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