Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.

The first novella about James Bond became a classic story about how an English spy engaged in a card game against Le Chiffre. The book’s author, Ian Fleming, claimed the inspiration came from his playing baccarat at Estoril Casino–that locates in Cascais e Estoril, Portugal and which was a place where met spies, dispossessed royals, and adventurous men–with some German chief agent to whom he lost, but his superior in Naval Intelligence Division, Read Admiral John Henry Godfrey, who was with him, debunked this saying the opponents were only local businessmen.

Casino Royale already includes attributes in a seducing lady, while the villains have physical shortcomings in their personalities. It introduces James Bond’s classic Martini cocktail, but alongside that, the English spy has more other alcohol drinks. Through the text, the writer shows his knowledge of elite food and clothing, which heroes eat and wear, respectively.

Ian Fleming’s approach to writing was to spend three hours in the morning and return to it from six and seven in the evening. He never corrected and didn’t read again his texts. It made the Englishman to produce about 2000 words per day. Fleming just typed text–and did it good (though there was an editor who checked it). He had talent for occasional depictions of something in which he could bring a poetry of metaphors. But there are places where seems the text was written to make a length by bringing things about which not need to think, as that a ball in roulette will fall differently after every roll, or he describes the emotions that protagonist haven’t– these positive feelings couldn’t be in a situation of being captured by enemies.

The story doesn’t lean into the impossible for most of the time, but I had less than fifty pages unfinished. However, it was strange in the beginning: Le Chiffre wasted money he received from SMERSH in 1946 and sold all property to use it for playing in casino, yet the novel is set in 1951, as Fleming claims. Unbelievable it took so long to sell the assets and the spy organization, which shows merciless to failures, shouldn’t allow him that much time.

The villain tries to slay Bond twice without a reason. Both want to make money through roulette–a thing where you only depend on luck, not a savvy move to fill the capital. The British spy wins by getting an amazing luck putting on “zero” more than once, and Le Chiffre organizes the explosion of a car near him, but a tree saves the life. The next try involves an armed assassin in their playing baccarat, which was at the moment when Bond loses. All these attempts wanted to present that Le Chiffre has no connection to them. Fleming creates holes. One survived Bulgar in a group–that executed the car explosion and they were supposed to be killed as well–tells about an instructor who explained how to act, but no investigation and searching of the latter who likely could lead to the main villain. French intelligence also wasn’t interested to get information about superiors from arrested the potential assassin in the second attempt.

The pulpiness of Casino Royale–which is enhanced in further books, as I found out–that no amount of alcohol can affect James Bond and he withstands everything extremal, as it was a car crash. Fleming doesn’t sense the reality. The hero almost alone drinks a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and orders another before scrambled eggs and bacon were put on the table. Either he drinks them too quickly or the service of that elite venue is too unprofessional to prepare a simple dish. Then he drives a car after his companion is kidnapped. Research showed that Bond consumes enormous quantity of drinks (forty-six in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and travels between long distances that would impossible to cross for his presented periods of time. After the car crash in Casino Royale, he only hadn’t mood to try to escape and felt “dispirited and weak”. It was his hands were roped, he uses his feet against one of Le Chiffre’s henchmen, but the foe’s hand catches his leg. Bond’s stance oddly depicted there: he feels weak again–yet only expert in jiu-jitsu could defeat him in that state. The protagonist reasoning in metaphors in being captured is senseless, and Fleming writes a lot of needless ones from that moment onward, as about his companion Vesper Lynd whose skirt was raised over her and is tied–she was “looking incredibly indecent in the early light of day”. The author forgets own text: Bond has no broken bones after the crash, yet his ribs are broken when one of the hostiles used his elbow, surprising how that could occur.

Fleming was losing his touch in the chapter about baccarat, which was a dry and fast depiction of combination cards. There he made a dramatization from the air: he clearly shows that Bond is close to winning, but Le Chiffre suddenly smiles – nevertheless the British spy takes the money in this round. The other players involved in the game were left unnoticeable when I read that only James Bond and Le Chiffre sat at the table. Fleming could miss the accenting.

It is hard to accept that after two attempts to kill and winning at baccarat, no one of the allied agencies wants to take care about protecting James Bond. He is only roped, but already suffers. Le Chiffre uses a cane carpet-beater to touch sensible parts of the body that brings to pain–the author knew about luxurious life and travelled a lot, but had no clue about a human anatomy. The villain doesn’t care that kidnapping the British spy and using the own house about which everybody knows isn’t a safe idea. I couldn’t accept at that point. There I ended with reading. I turned few pages forward to learn about appearance of a SMERSH assassin who shoots the villain and spares Bond’s live but he carves an upside-down “M” on his hand that identifies as a spy for Russian speakers – a naïve move because the hand could be covered and Ian Fleming had no idea about surgery advanced years ago in that you can remove the written from your body.

It was another book showed how the adaptation fixed flaws and improved the original material. Casino Royale already reveals it has no the high class of James Bond flicks through storyline and a personality of the main character by his drinking without limits and having scrambled eggs and bacon with two Veuve Cliquot at three o’clock in the night. In the movies, I always loved it when the hero shows elegance in choosing the year of wine or champagne, and how he prefers any beverage to be served at moments that are not so often.