Casino Royale
As my books and Music are not part of the core purpose of this Blog, I have developed some separate Pages for these. within this Blog, but meantime will park here:
Casino Royale, Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel.
A Ripping Yarn from the early fifties.
Which was reminiscent of two other books I have recently read and have not reviewed, Graham Greene's Confidential Agent and Paris After the Liberation by Antony Beevor and Artemus Cooper.
Very early Bond, with the seedy post war France as a setting and early intense Cold War themes. Bond in these novels is far more fragile and human than the movies. His over indulgence in alcohol, cigarettes, gambling food and sex is excessive and is seen as a vice and a flaw in his character. He is a professional and believes his attention to detail is his edge, Is still an alpha male. But, seriously considers retirement after being tortured and really falls for Vespa and does want to marry and be normal. But, she betrays him and he is slow to see it. So, is embittered and wants to take revenge against SMERSH, women and authority in general.
Here is the Book Rags review:
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming is a spy thriller set during the Cold War. It tells the story of one man, James Bond, and his evolution into a committed spy and secret agent. Bond accepts a mission to defeat a Russian agent, Le Chiffre, in a card game. He escapes death several times but eventually defeats Le Chiffre. This is just the beginning of Bond's journey. Other events lead to his renewed commitment to his job, which is a lifestyle more than a profession. The story is full of car chases, torture and sex as Bond's evolution into an international spy is revealed.
There are several story lines in the book. The main story is between James Bond, British secret agent 007, and Le Chiffre, an agent controlled by the Communist Russians. Le Chiffre has used Soviet money meant for a Communist controlled trade union to invest in brothels. This gets him into trouble when the French outlaw prostitution. The Soviet arch-spy agency SMERSH may be on his trail and if they catch him they will kill him. Le Chiffre's last resort is to remake the money through gambling. He goes to the Casino Royale in the north of France. Bond is an excellent gambler and his mission is to defeat Le Chiffre at the baccarat table and bankrupt him.
Bond checks into the hotel and prepares his operation. He has help from his partners including the beautiful Vesper Lynd, French agent Mathis and American CIA man Felix Lieter. Before Bond has a chance to face off with Le Chiffre, the Soviets make an attempt on his life. He survives a bomb blast unscathed. He makes it to the casino and confronts Le Chiffre. After tense drama, Bond manages to beat Le Chiffre in baccarat and bankrupts him.
After his win Bond takes Vesper out for a drink. She is lured into the parking lot and kidnapped by Le Chiffre. Bond pursues her and, after he crashes his car, is captured himself. Bond is tortured by Le Chiffre. Before he has a chance to break Bond, a SMERSH agent finds Le Chiffre and kills him. Bond and Vesper manage to escape but Bond is seriously injured. He spends three weeks in the hospital. While in the hospital Bond contemplates his future as a spy. When he is finally released, he starts a romantic relationship with Vesper. They take a vacation at a seaside inn.
They start a passionate relationship and Bond decides he will ask Vesper to marry him. Before he has the chance he catches Vesper making a secret phone call and acting duplicitously. Bond is frustrated and their relationship becomes strained. It comes to a head when Bond demands to know her secret. She promises to tell him the next day. They make passionate love and Bond retires to his own room. In the morning he finds Vesper, dead from a suicide. She was a double agent working for the Russians. This infuriates Bond and he recommits to his life as a spy.
Then here is from more background from good old Wikipedia:
Plot
M, the Head of the Secret Service, assigns James Bond, Special Agent 007, to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-les-Eaux casino in northern France. As part of Bond's cover as a rich Jamaican playboy, M also assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal assistant to the Head of Section S (Soviet Union). The French Deuxième Bureau and the CIA also send agents as observers. The game soon turns into an intense confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond; Le Chiffre wins the first round, bankrupting Bond. As Bond contemplates the prospect of reporting his failure to M, CIA agent Felix Leiter helps Bond and gives him an envelope with thirty-two million francs and a note: "Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA." The game continues, despite the attempts of one of Le Chiffre's minders to kill Bond. Bond eventually wins, taking from Le Chiffre eighty million francs belonging to SMERSH.
Desperate to recover the money, Le Chiffre kidnaps Lynd and subjects Bond to brutal torture, threatening to kill them both if he does not get the money back. In the midst of the torture session, a SMERSH assassin bursts in and kills Le Chiffre as punishment for losing the money. The agent does not kill Bond, saying that he has no orders to do so, but cuts a Cyrillic 'Ш' (sh) to signify the SHpion (Russian for spy) into Bond's hand so that future SMERSH agents will be able to identify him as such.
Lynd visits Bond every day as he recuperates in the hospital, and he gradually realises that he loves her; he even contemplates leaving Her Majesty's Secret Service to settle down with her. When Bond is released, they spend time together at a quiet guest house and eventually become lovers. One day they see a mysterious man named Gettler tracking their movements, which greatly distresses Lynd. The following morning, Bond finds that she has committed suicide. She leaves behind a note explaining that she had been working as an unwilling double agent for the MVD. SMERSH had kidnapped her lover, a Polish RAF pilot, who had revealed information about her under torture; SMERSH then used that information to blackmail her into helping them undermine Bond's mission, including her own faked kidnapping. She had tried to start a new life with Bond, but upon seeing Gettler – a SMERSH agent – she realised that she would never be free of her tormentors and that staying with Bond would only put him in danger. Bond informs his service of Lynd's duplicity, coldly telling his contact, "The bitch is dead now."
Characters and themes
When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, (James Bond) is the dullest name I ever heard.
— Casino Royale, Chapter 7: Rouge et Noir
The lead character of Casino Royale is James Bond, an agent of the "Secret Service". For his protagonist, Fleming appropriated the name of James Bond, author of the ornithology guide, Birds of the West Indies. Fleming explained to the ornithologist's wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born". He further explained that:
In the first draft of Casino Royale he decided to use the name James Secretan as Bond's cover name while on missions.
According to a Fleming biographer, Andrew Lycett, "within the first few pages Ian [Fleming] had introduced most of Bond's idiosyncrasies and trademarks", which included his looks, his Bentley and his smoking and drinking habits.The full details of Bond's martini were kept until chapter seven of the book and Bond eventually named it "The Vesper", after Vesper Lynd.
'A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.''Oui, monsieur.''Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?''Certainly monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.Bond laughed. 'When I'm ... er ... concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I think of a good name.'
Speaking of Bond's origins, Fleming said that "he was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war", although Fleming himself gave many of his own traits to the character.Bond's tastes are often taken from Fleming's own,as is some of his behaviour: Fleming used the casino to introduce Bond in his first novel because "skill at gambling and knowledge of how to behave in a casino were seen ... as attributes of a gentleman".Lycett sees much of Bond's character as being much "wish fulfilment" by Fleming.Continuation Bond author, Jeffery Deaver says that Bond "is a classic adventure-story hero. He confronts evil. Simple as that." Deaver also clarifies the point, saying that Bond is not a superhero, but that he is very human, doubting himself and making errors.Bond's superior, M, was largely based on Fleming's superior officer in Naval Intelligence during the war, Admiral Sir John Godfrey; Godfrey was known for his bellicose and irascible temperament. One of the likely models for Le Chiffre was the influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley, whose physical features are similar to Le Chiffre's; his tastes, especially in sado-masochism, were also akin to those of Le Chiffre and, as Fleming biographer Henry Chancellor notes, "when Le Chiffre goes to work on Bond's testicles with a carpet-beater and a carving knife, the sinister figure of Aleister Crowley is there lurking in the background."
Casino Royale was written shortly after, and was heavily influenced by, World War II. As the power of British Empire was beginning to decline, journalist William Cook observed that "Bond pandered to Britain's inflated and increasingly insecure self-image, flattering us with the fantasy that Britannia could still punch above her weight."In 1953, when Casino Royale was published, coal and many items of food were still rationed,and Bond was "the ideal antidote to Britain's postwar austerity, rationing and the looming premonition of lost power", according to historian and The Times journalist Ben Macintyre. The communist influence of Le Chiffre, with the overtones of a fifth column struck a chord with the largely British readership as Communist influence in the trade unions had been an issue in the press and parliament at the time. Britain had also suffered from defections to the Soviet Union from two MI5 operatives who were part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets, thus Lycett observes that Casino Royale can be seen as Fleming's "attempt to reflect the disturbing moral ambiguity of a post-war world that could produce traitors like Burgess and Maclean".
The question of Anglo-American relations was also raised within the novel, where Bond and Leiter's warm relationship was not mirrored in the wider US-UK association.Christopher Hitchens observed that "the central paradox of the classic Bond stories is that, although superficially devoted to the Anglo-American war against communism, they are full of contempt and resentment for America and Americans".Fleming was aware of this tension between the two countries, but he did not focus on it too strongly. Academic and writer Kingsley Amis, in his exploration of Bond in The James Bond Dossier, pointed out that "Leiter, such a nonentity as a piece of characterization ... he, the American, takes orders from Bond, the Britisher, and that Bond is constantly doing better than he".
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