Casino Royale: Ian Fleming (James Bond 007) - Hardcover

Fleming, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1784871990 ISBN 13: 9781784871994

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2017

Synopsis

INCLUDES ARCHIVE MATERIAL AND A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM JOHN CORK

Le Chiffre is a businessman with expensive tastes - and SMERSH’s chief operative in France. As his dissolute lifestyle threatens to ruin him, his only hope of survival is to risk his paymasters’ money at the baccarat table. Across from him sits James Bond, the finest gambler in the British secret service. Bond’s mission: to outplay Le Chiffre and shatter his Soviet cell.

Amidst the opulence of the Royale-les-Eaux casino, the two men face each other in a game with the highest stakes of all.

‘Ian Fleming has discovered the secret of narrative art...the reader has to go on reading’ John Betjeman

About this title

Review:

Ian Fleming created the character of James Bond, he said, to overcome the shock of getting married. Whatever his reasons, his first attempt at fiction started a global cultural phenomenon.

Casino Royale takes place on a smaller stage than later Bond adventures, as if Fleming wanted to familiarise himself with his spy before setting him loose on the world but it fizzes with intensity. SMERSH, the most powerful and feared organisation in the USSR, and one of its operatives, the French communist le Chiffre, are blamed for the deaths of a number of British agents and the British Secret Service wants justice. In a characteristic Fleming twist, however, le Chiffre is compromised from the start--a deadly agent in the service of his masters but with a deadly secret to hide from them. His, as yet undetected, misappropriation of a vast amount of SMERSH funds presents the British Secret Service with an ingenious opportunity to turn killer into sacrificial lamb. When a nearly bankrupt le Chiffre sets out to do some serious gambling at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux in order to replace the money, James Bond is assigned to out-gamble him, make SMERSH aware of his embezzlement and sit back and watch as they do the dirty work for him.

Casino Royale reveals the full complexity of James Bond's character, his sophistication, his sensitivity (he has serious anxieties about being a killer) and also his darker side. He is emotionally cold and distant to the opposite sex and his views on women are strong and chauvinistic; "These blithering women who though they could do a man's work. Why couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to me?" Part of the attraction of the adventure is the way it sets out future trademarks of the 007 series; a stern but ultimately caring "M", the flirtation between 007 and Miss Moneypenny, the spectacular locations, the beautiful girls and the dangerous and violent criminals.

Casino Royale is the most serious and violent of all the Bond novels and it shows Bond at his coldest and most ruthless. It is a fabulous opening to the Bond series and gives wonderful insights into the character of James Bond 007. --Jamie Campbell

Review:

"Ian Fleming has discovered the secret of narrative art...the reader has to go on reading" (John Betjeman)

"A superb gambling scene, a torture scene which still haunts me, a beautiful girl" (Raymond Chandler)

"Mr Fleming’s first novel is an extremely engaging affair...the especial charm of the book is the high poetry with which he invests the green blaize lagoons of the casino tables...Mr Fleming has produced a book that is both exciting and extremely civilized" (Times Literary Supplement)

"[Casino Royale is] lively, most ingenious in detail, on the surface as tough as they are made and charmingly well-bred beneath" (Spectator)

"One of the most original spy thrillers that has ever tickled a jaded palate" (Empire News)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1784871990
• ISBN 13: 9781784871994
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272