James Bond Novels - Casino Royale

The first of Ian Fleming's Bond novels, Casino Royale was apparently written in response to the looming shadow of getting married and the impending 'castration' from all the good things in life.

He started working on it in January 1952. At the time, Fleming was the Foreign Manager for Kemsley Newspapers, an organisation owned by The Sunday Times. Upon accepting the job, Fleming sensibly requested that he be allowed two months vacation per year. Every year thereafter, until his death in 1964, Fleming would retreat for the first two months of the year to his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye, to write a James Bond book.

Fleming used all aspects of his life as inspiration when writing: Every acquaintance of Ian Fleming ran the risk of ending up in one of his Bond books, and almost every character in his fiction is based on a real person, even if only by name. He plucked these monikers from his social circle, his memory, his reading, his favourite newspaper, the Jamaica Gleaner, and his imagination: old school friends (and enemies), clubmen, colleagues in the City and Fleet Street, golfing partners, girlfriends and others found themselves transported into Fleming’s fiction. The fact that my father's name Peter Franks appears in Diamonds are Forever, was always an intriguing adjunct to my fascination with the Bond novels.

Between 1953 and 1966, twelve James Bond novels and two short story collections by Fleming were published, including one novel and one collection issued posthumously. (It is still argued whether Fleming himself actually finished 1965's The Man with the Golden Gun, as he died very soon after it is known to have been completed.)

In Casino Royale MI6 assigns James Bond, Special Agent 007, to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-Les-Eaux casino. With him is Vesper Lynd, an MI6 accountant sent to make sure Bond handles the agency's money properly. He initially thinks of her as a nuisance, but over time grows to have romantic feelings for her.

The game soon turns into a one-on-one confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond that soon bankrupts the latter. As Bond contemplates killing Le Chiffre outright, he is approached by CIA agent Felix Leiter, who offers to stake Bond for another hand. Bond accepts the offer and eventually wins the game, taking from Le Chiffre tens of millions of francs belonging to SMERSH. Desperate, Le Chiffre kidnaps Lynd and subjects Bond to brutal torture, threatening to kill them both if he does not get the money back. Suddenly, a SMERSH assassin bursts in and kills Le Chiffre as punishment for losing the money, saving Bond's life.

Lynd visits Bond every day as he recuperates in the hospital, and he gradually realizes that he loves her; he even contemplates leaving Her Majesty's Secret Service to settle down with her. When Bond is released, they go on holiday together, and eventually become lovers. One day, they see a mysterious man named Gettler tracking their movements, which greatly distresses Vesper. The following morning, Bond finds that Lynd has committed suicide, leaving 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 life with Bond, but upon seeing Gettler — a SMERSH agent — she realized that she would never be free of her tormentors, and that staying with Bond would only put him in danger.

Bond copes with the loss by renouncing Lynd as a traitor and going back to work as if nothing has happened, coldly telling M, "The bitch is dead now." Nevertheless, subsequent novels reveal that he never truly gets over her death; in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, for example, it is revealed that he makes an annual pilgrimage to Royale-Les-Eaux to visit her grave, while in Diamonds Are Forever, he avoids listening to "La Vie en Rose", a song closely associated with Lynd in Casino Royale.

Fleming stated that Casino Royale was inspired by certain incidents that took place during his career at the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. Childhood friend Brett Hart was the basis for the novel, including a trip to Lisbon that Fleming and the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, took during World War II en route to the United States.

While there, they went to the Estoril Casino in Estoril, which (due to the neutral status of Portugal) had a number of spies of warring regimes present. Fleming claimed that while there he was cleaned out by a "chief German agent" at a table playing chemin de fer. Admiral Godfrey tells a different story: Fleming only played Portuguese businessmen and that afterwards Fleming had fantasized about there being German agents and the excitement of cleaning them. His references to 'Red Indians' (four times, twice on last page) comes from Fleming's own 30 Assault Unit, which he nicknamed his own 'Red Indians'.

The failed assassination attempt on Bond while at Royale-Les-Eaux is also claimed by Fleming to be inspired by a real event. The inspiration comes from a failed assassination on Franz von Papen who was a Vice-Chancellor and Ambassador under Adolf Hitler. Both Papen and Bond survive their assassination attempts, carried out by Bulgarians, due to a tree that protects them both from a bomb blast.

On a geographic note, the city of Royale-les-Eaux and its casino are inspired by Le Touquet-Paris-Plage or by Deauville, where Fleming used to play as a young man.

Casino Royale is a fanatstic introduction to Bond, the otherwordly almost exotic atmosphere of a late-night French casino was in stark contrast to the austerity of both post-war and mid-seventies (when I first read it) Britain. Bond's willingness to take on the cunning Le Chiffre, whilst polishing off numerous drinks and enemies in equal measure sets a pace that didn't let up in his writing for the next ten years.

Bond's latent racism and inherent sexism, whilst not to be dismissed, must be taken in the context of the time and Fleming's upbringing. In fact compared to some of the crass examples of both in the latter films his prejudices are quite mild. That being said, Casino Royale is the only place to start for anybody discovering him for the first time and indeed the only place for anyone returning to his annual trawl through the files of Commander Sir James Bond, (KCMG, RNVR).