Story Synopsis It only has one explosion, one car chase, and one man shot, but Fleming's first book introduces us to James Bond, a bold gambler and exceptionally careful secret agent who sleeps with a gun under his pillow and sets up miniature "burglar alarms" in his room to see if he is being watched. As a British double-O agent he is licensed to kill. The villain is Le Chiffre, a Soviet agent of SMERSH (Death to Spies), whom Bond is to destroy at the gambling tables by winning money earmarked for use by SMERSH for counter-intelligence, vengeance and executions. Despite Bond's caution, the enemy is watching him. We meet Vesper Lynd, the first of the beautiful Bond girls, but before anything can develop between them, bomb-tossing assassins make an unsuccessful attempt on Bond's life. He learns from Vesper, an intelligence agent, that the assassins (who were killed in the explosion) were victims of a double-cross intended to kill them as well as Bond. At the card table, Bond, bankrolled by his government, first faces bad luck and loses, but with the help of an American loan courtesy of Felix Leiter of the CIA, Bond begins to win. He is quietly threatened to lose by a bystander with a gun in Bond's back. Bond, however, making it look as if he fell disarms the thug and comes back to defeat Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre's men kidnap Vesper and Bond chases them in his Bentley only to be ambushed and taken prisoner. Tortured, Bond refuses to reveal where he has hidden the money that he won in the casino. At the end of a long series of torments, a SHMERSH agent appears and shoots Le Chiffre for failing in his mission, but he doesn't kill Bond because he "has no orders to kill" him. Bond is rescued and finds that Vesper has not been harmed although she suffers from shock. As Bond recovers, Vesper often visits him in the hospital. When he is discharged, they go to a small seaside hotel where his feelings for Vesper deepen. He falls in love intending to ask her to marry him. In the final chapters, however, Vesper begins to act strangely making Bond suspicious. A stranger with a black patch visits the hotel and his appearance agitates Vesper. One night, after making love, Vesper leaves Bond and commits suicide by drinking poison. The next day Bond finds a letter from Vesper where she admits to being a double agent working for the Russians and that she had helped set up Bond for the assassination attempts. But she had fallen in love with him and knew that they could never live a safe life together. The man with the patch or someone like him would always find them. The novel closes with Bond, turned bitter and determined to destroy the enemy, reporting that Vesper was a double agent and that "the bitch is dead." Review Although a simple story line, Casino Royale is important as the premier Bond story. It sets the formula that several other stories were to follow: the evil villain who provides a reason for 007 to become involved in the conflict, the beautiful Bond girl who provides a reason for 007 to become involved in the romance, Bond getting captured and tortured, his escape and eventual triumph over the antagonist. On the way, the reader is treated to an explanation of some subject that currently interested Fleming, in the case of Casino Royale, the game and strategy of baccarat. Bond is presented as a very human character who, although an expert at his work, is not the superhero of the films. He makes mistakes, recognizes them, and curses his own errors of judgment. His escapes from doom are often the result of luck. There is no way of knowing what went on in Fleming's mind as he wrote Casino Royale, but there may be evidence he simply intended to write a story about a spy and then get on with other interests in his life. However, during the writing of the manuscript, he might have seen value in keeping Bond as a character for future adventures. The involvement of assassins and surveillance of Bond when connected with the extreme malignancy of Le Chiffre are in line with a good yarn. Bond's falling in love with Vesper, an appealing heroine, and contemplating marriage point to a satisfactory "bad-guys-lose, good-guys-win" story. However, a married Bond growing fat and happy with grandchildren wouldn't make for good future books. Fleming begins to twist the story by its tail, perhaps as early as suddenly killing off Le Chiffre, but certainly during the time Bond and Vesper are at the hotel. Her subsequent suicide note conveniently explains why she was a double agent (no hint of her RAF lover earlier) and "explains" why Bond was shadowed and nearly killed earlier. Any hope that Bond was a sentimental mourner dies with his final statement. But it opens the door to his future adventures as a ruthless agent plagued with doubts and fears who, nonetheless, carries out his duties with courage and skill. Copyright © 1999, 2000 Ray Dempsey