Apostrophe S

“Casino Royale” is the second 007 novel by Ian Fleming that I’ve read. (The first being “From Russia With Love.”) FRWL was the test to see if I would like the ink and paper Bond as much as the film Bond. I did, if not more. So the next logical place for me was to start over with the first book Fleming wrote. I was not disappointed.

Fleming lends to Bond (or, more appropriately, originally envisioned Bond as having) an air of sophistication and gritty class that his film counterpart lost about halfway through “Goldfinger”. The film Bond is still pretty cool, but he has picked up an air of buffoonery over the years, almost as if he’s always a parody of himself. Fleming’s Bond doesn’t have that at all. In “Royale,” Bond tells another character that the Double O status is awarded to agents who have been required to kill in cold blood in the line of duty. Not because they are the best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared agents. No no. It’s because they will kill without a moment’s hesitation. And Bond’s cold personality appropriately reflects it. That’s not to say that Bond doesn’t have passions or never lets his guard down. He enjoys his meals and especially takes pleasure in being somewhat of an expert in the finer points in life such as cigarettes, champagne and brandy. And Fleming’s Bond has a weakness for women. They always get him into trouble.

The story revolves around a game of Baccarat, in which Bond is assigned the task of bankrupting a Russian SMERSH (”Death to Spies”) agent, which he does, but not without shedding a few drops of persperation first. The stakes are quite high. However, Bond’s win only gets him into more trouble as the SMERSH agent, named Le Chiffre, captures Bond and attempts to torture from him the location of his winnings in a manner most, er…, painful to a man. The last half of the book deals with Bond’s slow recovery from the nasty treatment he gets and his slow romance with a female agent he’s been working with. The book is a little top-heavy in that most of the action is finished by about halfway through, leaving Bond to deal with the aftermath.

I had always though the character of Bond must have emerged from pulp quality writing, and I am again surprised by the robustness of Fleming’s language. Observe:

The girl sat silent. She accepted one of Bond’s cigarettes, examined it and then smoked it appreciatively and without affectation, drawing the smoke deeply into her lungs with a little sigh and then exhaling it casually through her lips and nostrils. Her movements were economical and precise with no trace of self-consciousness. [p.32]

The girl’s actions effectively describe her attitude and how we might expect her to act for the rest of the book. It’s easy to visualize the woman who might smoke a cigarette in this way. Fleming also keeps chapters short; There are 27 in this 181-page edition. It effectively breaks up the action and divides the story into neat scenes for an easy read. I like that.

And of course I also like applicability in old books. Sentences written 50 years ago often jump out at me not because of the intention with which they were originally written, but because of the meaning history has lent them. I’ll leave you with this tidbit as an example, as Bond explains his disenchantment with the whole spying business:

Of course, patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts. [p.135]

Next book, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden.

[This article is part of the 26 Books project that I'm doing this year.]