One reason Bond is a believable hero is because he often doesn't win the fights he gets into. You will find similar boozy passages in much of the literature of the time, including Hemingway. And although today he would be fined heavily and slapped in rehab quick as you please, his excesses seems to be taken as a given by his co-characters, who after all are all doing pretty much the same thing. Bond starts his day with a drink, sips his way through lunch, meets his buddies for cocktails, may polish off some champagne with the girl, and smokes like a chimney through it all ('Then he lit his seventieth cigarette of the day…') How he ever manages to play cards, drive, sail, swim, fight, shoot and all the other manly things he does, smashed out of his gourd and coughing as he must have been, is unfathomable. These are some hard-drinking, chain-smoking folks.

It is hard to imagine that people really lived as described in the pages of Fleming's masterpieces. 'Do they think this is a bloody picnic?') Thus, the charming Vesper Lynd becomes the first of Bond's lovely and oddly named heroines. ('What the hell do they want to send a bloody woman for?' he said bitterly. To Bond's horror, he is assigned a sidekick for this case, a female. Bond, a proficient cardplayer, has been sent to make sure that Le Chiffre does not win. It seems that Le Chiffre has been dipping into the company pot to support his bad habits, and now that his bosses want the money, he must attempt to recoup his losses at the casino. Their duel takes place in large part at the gaming tables of the casino in the fashionable French resort town of Royale-les-Eaux (Bond's foes are always able to function in his milieu, the world of the mid-century gentleman).īond is out to cause Le Chiffre financial ruin, so that his bosses at SMERSH (Fleming's fictional KGB equivalent) will get rid of him. Casino Royale pits 007 against the arch-villain Le Chiffre. Among them is Casino Royale, the first of Fleming's Bond series. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first James Bond film, 1962's Doctor No, another is being released this year ( Die Another Day) – and several of the books are being re-released as well. The Man from UNCLE owes him a large debt, as does Austin Powers (the Korean handyman 'Random Task' in the first Austin Powers film is a direct knock-off of Goldfinger's 'Odd Job' – just one possible example of many) and virtually every other fictional spy character. His debonair 1940's male superiority manages somehow to be appealing even in this day of equality between the sexes, and his continued fame has led to a huge variety of spin-offs.

Even people who have never read Ian Fleming's classic books or seen even one of his many movies instantly recognize the name.

James Bond has become a true cultural icon, surviving the decades near-unscathed. Casino Royale: A James Bond Novel - book review

James bond book casino royale