Since they announced Casino Royale would be the next Bond film, I decided I ought to read it. The films and books usually don’t correlate all that closely, but I was interested to see what might be in store on the offchance they really do keep to their word and take it back to traditional Bond.

Hmmm….

Well, it could be a long and rather dull film if they do. You see, not much happens. I’m going to spoil the story here - the story of the book, at least, although in all likelihood not the story of the film.

Our hero finds himself in Royale, a small French town famed for its casino (you can guess its name). He has been sent there by M to play the mother of all Baccara matches against Le Chiffre, a Russian spy who is being hunted down by SMERSH, the Soviet Agency that knocks off the Union’s own rogue agents before they become an embarassement. It was alluded to in the film version of The Living Daylights, the plot of which revolved around the supposed revival of Smyert Shpionam (translation: death to spies, and the derivative of the contraction SMERSH).

You can pretty much guess who wins and what eventually happens to Le Chiffre, and to be honest the whole casino gambling stuff is so well written that reading about a bunch of people sitting around playing cards turns out to be quite exciting. Bond, though, is more or less unrecognisable as the character we see in the films.

There is a long, dwindling, slow wind-down of the storyline after the plot climax, in which Bond comes across as a desperate, love-sick teenager. In fact, no - more like a sad old man who is so desperate to cling to the woman who he might possible, perhaps get further with that he will put up with pretty much anything. This isn’t the love-em and leave-em love-villain we know from the films. He is a flawed, insecure character who seems suddenly to fear being left on his own.

Perhaps it was done to establish the character. This is the first book of the series, after all, and the dwindling ending does go on to explain why he lives his life the way he is, and why he is so driven from here on in (before this book, he had only killed two men, and he doesn’t kill anyone - even Le Chiffre - in these 189 pages). If that’s the case, then I can excuse it but, well, as I say, hmmm…

I bought the book on eBay for 99p, along with three others, so I’ll read through some more of the series before casting my final judgement.

1. Casino Royale
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2. Quantum of Solace
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3. Thunderball
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