Casino Royale [Mass Market Paperback]

Bond is sent to the fashionable French casino of the title to pose as a playboy gambler, and with the aid of beautiful British assistant Vesper Lynn, a French agent, and the CIA's Felix Leiter, ruin Le Chiffre at baccarat. Once you get over the sort of obvious question (if Le Chiffre is that dangerous an agent, why not just kill him yourself instead of going through this dangerous gambit of trying to bankrupt him, thereby forcing SMERSH to kill him?), the buildup and eventual battle on the green baize is quite gripping. Fortunately, the rules and strategy of baccarat are explained (it's a very very simple game), so that the reader can follow along, blow by blow. There's loads of atmosphere and tension, but the structure is a bit awkward and there are some rather bad flaws. One of these is that there's absolutely no reason for Vesper to be in the book other than to serve as a plot device and sex interest. All she does is get in Bond's way and distract him, and it's hard to imagine why she would ever really be given the assignment to back up Bond. It's also rather strange to find the Le Chiffre affair concluding 3/4 of the way through the book, with the last quarter devoted to the Bond/Vesper romance. And I won't even get into the lame "saved by the bell" device that occurs at the climax. All in all, the book exhibits the excellent eye for detail and atmosphere that characterize most of the Bond books, but Fleming is clearly just learning pacing and structure at this stage.

A final point of clarification, the Frenchman "Le Chiffre" is not an agent of SMERSH, as many reviewers seem to think. The fictional SMERSH, with its motto "death to spies", is an internal Soviet agency dedicated to counterespionage and making sure Soviet agents don't stray. As is explained early, Le Chiffre is forced to gamble because he's afraid that SMERSH will kill him if they discover he's blown his party funds on a bad business deal.

The plot revolves around the need for government agent James Bond to beat a Russian spy decisively at the Baccarat table in a ritzy casino/vacation resort. It doesn't get much more complicated than that, although the sections of the book involving the initial stakeout and the game itself are satisfying and competent. They seem to be very influenced by the pulp thrillers that had come in years past, though they bring little new to the table. They're fun though. My main problem came once the initial conflict has been resolved, all the way at the two-thirds point. The final third of the book involves a bizarre romance and an even stranger set of ruminations on good vs. evil. This section is, to be frank, childishly inept, and ruins any good will I had stored up from the casino plot. Yes, deliberations on what separates agents working for the "good" guys and spies working for "evil" governments is an interesting idea and one which has sparked numerous thought-provoking debates and discussions. But this isn't one of them.

James Bond himself isn't terribly developed yet; I assume his persona would become better established in subsequent novels. He's humorless, moody and drab. I never really felt there was enough to get a grip on the character. The rest of the cast are sketchy as well. Of course, since most of them are lesser agents who only show up when they have a plot point to fill, that's to be expected. Bond's love interest receives more characterization from her slinky portrait on the cover than from anything that appears in the pages.

To be honest, I'm faintly surprised to hear rumors of Hollywood producers wishing to film this (on the premise that it's the last James Bond novel that hasn't been faithfully adapted to the screen). It seems to me it would be rather dull after the excesses recently displayed in the movies. There's only one explosion, a relatively tame car chase sequence, no helicopters, jet-planes, or space vehicles. In short, it's comparatively tame. Hopefully they'll adapt the better parts of the book (the gambling and casino intrigue) and cut out the bad (the last sixty or so pages). Merging the book's successes with the better-established characters may result in an entertaining film, but it has its work cut out for it if it wants to be great.