James Bond in Prose

As originally intended.

James Bond is a franchise I’ve often thought I should enjoy, but most of what I’ve seen has left me cold.

I liked these movies, though: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Casino Royale, and Skyfall.

They feature a more human Bond who has a meaningful relationship with a woman—each of whom, like him, has a tough shell to crack through, and each of whom meets a tragic end. Only two of the three are romantic relationships.

Other Bond movies I’ve seen have their entertaining moments, but I can take them or leave them. Given that, there are several I’ve never seen, so maybe there are a couple more I would have liked.

Another James Bond exists, however—the original Bond of the novels by Ian Fleming. I had been meaning to check those out for a while and finally got around to sampling a couple. Naturally, I opted for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Casino Royale. And I enjoyed both.

Published in 1953, Casino Royale is the first James Bond novel and the character’s debut in any medium. It’s also the book I read more recently, so I’ll focus on that one. (SPOILERS ahead for both book and movie.)

It’s a tight novel and a fast read. The paperback edition I bought is only 212 pages, and the type isn’t small.

The 2006 movie adaptation fleshed this out into nearly two and half hours of screentime, beefing up the story with action set pieces and spectacle and also giving extra attention to romantic interest Vesper Lynd. Plus, the movie acts as a partial origin story for Bond, beginning with the moment he achieves his 007 status and ending with him emerging as a more classic version of the character. All of this serves the movie well.

And the novel’s more streamlined approach serves it well. There’s less running around but more quality time getting to know Bond as a person.

The British Secret Service assigns Bond to play a card game against a SMERSH operative known as Le Chiffre. The plan is to bankrupt Le Chiffre and thereby deal a major financial blow to the Soviets. Of course, the plan works only if Bond wins the game.

Much of the first half takes place right in the casino. The novel opens with a brief description of the setting, and then the second paragraph gives us our first image of James Bond:

James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. This helped him to avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes.

The first sentence confirms that Bond is human. The rest hints at his skill and self-awareness. This introductory paragraph gives us a sense of vulnerability and strength, both of which are essential to any compelling protagonist.

Two paragraphs later, we meet the antagonist:

Le Chiffre was still playing and still, apparently, winning.

So the bad guy is on top while Bond is clearly not. A solid start.

Some straight-up exposition follows in the early chapters. Fleming handles it efficiently. He gets it out of the way, gets us oriented, then gets on with the story.

The baccarat game is plenty tense. The novel requires fewer supplementary action scenes, but it has its share. In the movie, Bond is poisoned during the game and attempts to treat himself, with guidance from MI6, though Vesper saves him at the last second. In the book, one of Le Chiffre’s men sticks a silent gun against Bond’s spine and tells him he has until the count of ten to withdraw his bet.

As the man starts counting, Bond must figure out how to save himself without alerting anyone else to the danger. It’s a quieter, less visual threat, but equally gripping.

The novel becomes more and more of a page-turner as it goes. Later, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and Bond, and he tortures Bond the same way he does in the movie. Let’s just call it a male-specific torture technique. The novel, however, takes us into Bond’s head and shows us how he struggles to resist giving in. And we still get deliciously villainous monologuing from Le Chiffre:

‘I am without mercy and there will be no relenting. There is no one to stage a last-minute rescue and there is no possibility of escape for you. This is not a romantic adventure story in which the villain is finally routed and the hero is given a medal and marries the girl. Unfortunately, these things don’t happen in real life.’

The scene builds Le Chiffre into a seemingly unbeatable foe, but then the resolution foreshadows even greater threats in future books.

During his recovery, Bond engages in a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil. It’s a talky scene that would be difficult to pull off in a movie, but it works well in the book and comes at the right time. It shows the doubts beneath Bond’s confident exterior and allows him to come across as a bit more layered.

The scene ends on an excellent note that gets to the core of Bond, as his friend Mathis tells him:

‘Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.’

He laughed. ‘But don’t let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine.’

The rest of the book focuses on Bond’s romance with Vesper. He lets his guard down and lets someone in, but it soon becomes clear that something is haunting her, something she refuses to discuss, something that ultimately drives her to suicide.

Vesper leaves Bond a letter explaining everything, revealing that she was forced to become a double agent for the Russians to save the life of her boyfriend. She tried to give as little info as possible, but she did betray information about Bond’s activities, leading to threats on his life as well as his capture.

Fleming shows us Bond’s immediate reaction to the letter:

Bond threw the letter down. Mechanically he brushed his fingers together. Suddenly he banged his temples with his fists and stood up. For a moment he looked out towards the quiet sea, then he cursed aloud, one harsh obscenity.

His eyes were wet and he dried them.

James Bond emotes … then clamps right up.

The betrayal remotivates Bond to take on SMERSH and bring them down. The shell re-hardens around him. He processes the information from the letter and recasts Vesper as a treacherous villain in his mind.

Then he phones in the update in the book’s memorable final sentences:

He spoke quietly into the receiver.

‘This is 007 speaking. This is an open line. It’s an emergency. Can you hear me? Pass this on at once. 3030 was a double, working for Redland.

‘Yes, dammit, I said “was”. The bitch is dead now.’

The movie keeps Vesper’s double-agent status but works it into an action-packed spectacle, bringing us to a house in Venice for a dramatic final fight. The house falls apart and sinks into the water, drowning Vesper before Bond can save her. It’s an effective and exciting climactic scene.

The movie also keeps the “bitch is dead” line but makes it explicitly clear that Vesper wasn’t all bad, just in case we couldn’t figure that out on our own.

But the novel ends on that line. It punches us with ice and lets the moment hang there. Throughout the book, Bond has cycled from detached spy to victorious operative to wounded man to rejuvenated man open to love, but now he snaps back to cold, unforgiving steel. He’s a machine once more. He’s not exactly emotionless, though—he’s employing a defense mechanism against painful feelings. And it makes Ian Fleming’s Bond all the more human and compelling.

The next book in the series is Live and Let Die. The ending to Casino Royale makes me want to read it.

Previous Posts

I seem to have stumbled into an infrequent series about prose versions of popular characters. Here are the previous installments: