Bond's genesis tale: An exciting, haunting, introspective, Cold War espionage thriller.

I recently sat down to re-read CR, I had no idea its 60th anniversary was coming, so now would seem a perfect time to discuss some of the things I found re-reading the book.

The first thing that must be said is that the book isn’t nearly as ‘explosive’ as the Bond we are used to seeing today. Heck, the book isn’t nearly as explosive as Fleming’s latter 007 novels. However, it would be a fruitless endeavour I think to condemn the book for this. Fleming had no idea he was writing the genesis tale for one of fiction’s greatest characters, I think it is therefore important to judge the book on its own merits and avoid the baggage which is now associated with it.

I really loved the book. The first half of the story is really very exciting; I know it’s a cliché but it is a ‘page-turner’, the story keeps you hooked. The time Fleming spends in those first few pages setting up Bond’s world is simply thriller-writing at its best. Immediately we meet a man in a glamorous casino surveying the room looking for the exits and calculating the odds of Le Chiffre’s potential robbery of the casino. When he goes to his hotel room and receives his telegram, Fleming hints at the world his character lives in and introduces all the elements slowly. Bond is a man living in the shadows and there seems to be a lot of cloak-and-dagger antic from his superiors to keep it that way.

The book is a real testament to its time as the Cold War paranoia is ratcheted up constantly. Bond checks his hotel for any sort of activity, he prides himself on his cover and is angry when he gets exposed, everyone keeps talking in code, all the characters back in London are kept as mysterious as possible and is boss is simply known as M and he works with men referred to only as ‘Head of S’. This is truly great Cold War espionage writing, as there is a great sense of distrust even between the author and his audience. This distrust also perminates with the other characters throughout the story; Mathis and Bond are good friends but acknowledge the rivalry that exists between them, also when Bond sits with Leiter and they talk shop; Bond is more than aware than his American counterpart is keeping secrets from him. Casino Royale seems to be a place where even your friends are your enemies; it’s with some irony then that the only other mi6 agent who Bond trusts completely and falls in love with betrays him.

The actual card game itself is possibly the most exciting part of the book by far. I’ve never played baccarat, but the game is very easy to follow and the way the story is written is very entertaining. Le Chiffre’s French brothel backstory isn’t so thrilling for today’s standards, but his decision to try and recoup his losses with a high stakes casino game is one of the most audacious and fantastic storylines out there. The actual gambling scene is far from a simple card-game of course, it is a battle of ideologies. Communism vs Capitalism, with Le Chiffre personifying all the things Bond hates about the enemy. It’s very much a ‘cold war’ as these two use the green blaize as a battlefield without even saying a word to each other. Fleming though grabs his audience and quickly whisks them away with the torture sequence, this must have been great reading in 1953 as audiences didn’t know Bond as we do now and many would likely have not expected him to make it out intact.

The last act for the book is therefore very interesting as tonally the it does seem to shift. Fleming almost subverts the book’s context by essentially asking ‘what’s it all about’? Before this point of the novel Bond isn’t all that interesting, the world he inhabits is very exciting but as a character he doesn’t really do much and instead just seems to react to things happening around him. However, after the torture this changes and Bond starts to question what it is he is doing and who it is he is helping. Who are the heroes and who are the villains? Mathis describes it perfectly when he tells Bond to stop being soo introspective as he fears he may become ‘too human’ as at the moment he is far too good a ‘machine’. Mathis really nails it here, at this point of the story Bond has been harsh and cold, a man who can read people perfectly and knows the odds of any situations. When at dinner with Vesper he shuts down when the talk gets too personal, but soon after the horrific events that happen to him he begins to become what Mathis fears, ‘human’. A lot has been written by fans on ‘the nature of evil’ passage, so I’ll be quick; I found the discussion interesting, especially when Bond put himself in Le Chiffre’s shoes, it makes the ideological baccarat battle seem almost superfluous in light of Bond’s realisation. Of course, any doubts Bond had about his profession and who the bad-guys are are dusted aside once Vesper betrays him and he becomes the tempered-steel man we know today.

I liked the Vesper character a lot, she’s an enigma to 007 and that entices him. He desires her (almost disgustingly so) but he can’t read her and for a man quite as arrogant about his talents as Bond it annoys him. He is after all a machine and the fact he can’t crack Vesper irritates him and only makes him desire her more, of course he’s going to fall in love with her and of course their relationship is thereon doomed. This part of the novel does sag slightly, with the last 50 pages or so losing some of the pace the previous 150 established. I found Vesper’s characterisation to actually be rather good, many often cite that Vesper seems to go a little awry towards the end of the novel but throughout the story she seems to be sitting on top of a lot of intensity and she’s just waiting to boil over. She’s a much more tragic and less assured person in the book. The betrayal has to come of course as Bond trusts her, unlike any other character in the book, so it’s essential that that trust is broken, therefore leaving him empowered to go after the threat behind the threat. Her betrayal though is also very important to the Cold War paranoia perminating throughout the story – Vesper is a normal girl who is manipulated by the enemy and betrays her country, something that was a very real threat at the time considering the Cambridge spies issues. The threat at home can be just as bad as the threat away.

So CR is an exciting, fast-paced Cold War thriller. It sets up the world of Bond in a fun and glamorous way but with an interesting introspective edge.