Casino Royale (James Bond Series #1)

by Ian Fleming Narrated by Richard Armitage

Overview

Read by Richard Armitage

JAMES BOND PLAYS A DEADLY GAME OF CHANCE IN IAN FLEMING'S LEGENDARY FIRST 007 NOVEL

“Le Chiffre” is a ruthless operative and the accountant for a soviet SMERSH cell in France, but he's on the verge of disaster after gambling away his client's money. Taking the last of his stash, he lures a dozen wealthy players to a high-stakes baccarat game, hoping to hustle his way whole.

The British Secret Service would like to see this red thorn plucked from the hide of Europe, and sends their best card sharp, James Bond, to bankrupt Le Chiffre for good.

With the cards running against him and SMERSH operatives threatening to kill him and his beautiful ally, Vesper Lynd, 007 needs his luck to turn before he wagers away their lives.

Editorial Reviews

The Denver Post

Here Bond is not the charming, witty sophisticate that Sean Connery, Roger Moore and other actors have made him. Casino Royale is noticeably lacking in humor, and Bond is equally noticeably cold and ruthless, yet at the same time a romantic susceptible to love's pangs. In fact, the novel is as much a love story - with a sad ending - as an espionage thriller. — Roger K. Miller

Library Journal

The allure of James Bond was best described by Raymond Chandler, who insisted that 007 is "what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets." Who can argue with that? This month marks the 40th anniversary of the film release of Dr. No, which was the first Bond adventure to make the big screen, and two big coffee-table books are being published to honor the occasion (LJ 10/1/02, p. 96). Shockingly, Fleming's original novels have gone out of print, but Penguin here reproduces a trio of the British secret agent's early outings, released in 1952, 1958, and 1959, respectively, sporting stylish cover art. These stories were racy for the nifty Fifties but are quite tame by today's standards. Still, they can be fun. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

B Wright

...The first part of the book is a brilliant novelette in itself, dealing with the unlikely but imaginitive plot to ruin a Communist agent by gambling against him for high stakes...But then he decides to pad out the book to novel length and leads the weary reader through a set of tough cliches to an ending which surprises no one save operative 007... Books of the Century, New York Times review April 1954

Sunday Times

From the first evocative words to the last savagely ironic sentence. this is a novel with its own flavor.”

Times Literary Supplement

Mr. Fleming has produced a book that is both exciting and extremely civilized.”

AudioFile

Narrator Dan Stevens, of Downton Abbey fame, perfectly captures the joie de vivre of Bond and, even more important, his humanity. While images of Sean Connery are inescapable, Stevens creates his own version of the secret agent…And what Bond book would be complete without a woman? The femme fatale in this work is one of the more fully realized women in the Bond series and has surprises of her own.”

author of High Time to Kill Raymond Benson

An intense, fascinating, and moody piece of fiction.”

Raymond Chandler

Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.”

From the Publisher

Love him or hate him, James Bond remains relevant to some of the biggest debates of the times. This fine edition takes us to the source: the first Bond novel. Jason Haslam and Julia Wright provide the critical and historical tools to understand how Ian Fleming created what they call ‘rich registers’ of culture. From parsing his attention to grated boiled egg for what it suggests about post-war rationing to tracing his conversion of global politics and real-world documents of espionage into sensate narrative to placing his novel within a wider range of his own writings and several literary genres, the editors tease out layers and point to connections with depth, precision, and wit.” — Christine Bold, University of Guelph

“Some seven decades on, the figure of James Bond is as firmly embedded in popular culture as Sherlock Holmes or Dracula. This critical edition gives us the material we need to think through the many iterations of Bond, and the complexly nuanced world in which he moves in the novels. Immaculately researched and full of the kind of contextual detail needed for both those new to Bond and old friends to make sense of the nodes of masculinity, empire and sexuality that swirl around the ultimate spy, this is the edition for which we have been waiting.” — Stacy Gillis, Newcastle University

OCTOBER 2014 - AudioFile

Released in 1953, this is the first Ian Fleming novel featuring secret agent James Bond. Narrator Dan Stevens, of “Downton Abbey” fame, perfectly captures the joie de vivre of Bond and, even more important, his humanity. While images of Sean Connery are inescapable, Stevens creates his own version of the secret agent as a young Bond is ordered to bankrupt a high-ranking Russian spy called “Le Chiffre” at the baccarat table of the famed European casino. The frequent use of French is sometimes annoying but can be ignored for the sake of the story. And what Bond book would be complete without a woman? The femme fatale in this work is one of the more fully realized women in the Bond series and has surprises of her own. M.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175913553
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Series:	James Bond Series
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	618,546

Read an Excerpt

1. THE SECRET AGENT

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling—a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension—becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.

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.

He shifted himself unobtrusively away from the roulette he had been playing and went to stand for a moment at the brass rail which surrounded breast-high the top table in the salle privee.

Le Chiffre was still playing and still, apparently, winning. There was an untidy pile of flecked hundred-mille plaques in front of him. In the shadow of his thick left arm there nestled a discreet stack of the big yellow ones worth half a million francs each.

Bond watched the curious, impressive profile for a time, and then he shrugged his shoulders to lighten his thoughts and moved away.

The barrier surrounding the caisse comes as high as your chin and the caissier, who is generally nothing more than a minor bank clerk, sits on a stool and dips into his piles of notes and plaques. These are ranged on shelves. They are on a level, behind the protecting barrier, with your groin. The caissier has a cosh and a gun to protect him, and to heave over the barrier and steal some notes and then vault back and get out of the casino through the passages and doors would be impossible. And the caissiers generally work in pairs.

Bond reflected on the problem as he collected the sheaf of hundred thousand and then the sheaves often thousand franc notes. With another part of his mind, he had a vision of tomorrow's regular morning meeting of the casino committee.

'Monsieur Le Chiffre made two million. He played his usual game. Miss Fairchild made a million in an hour and then left. She executed three "bancos" of Monsieur Le Chiffre within an hour and then left. She played with coolness. Monsieur le Vicomte de Villorin made one million two at roulette. He was playing the maximum on the first and last dozens. He was lucky. Then the Englishman, Mister Bond, increased his winnings to exactly three million over the two days. He was playing a progressive system on red at table five. Duclos, the chef de partie, has the details. It seems that he is persevering and plays in maximums. He has luck. His nerves seem good. On the soiree, the chemin-de-fer won x, the baccarat won y and the roulette won z. The boule, which was again badly frequented, still makes its expenses.'

'Merci, Monsieur Xavier.'

'Merci, Monsieur le President.'

Or something like that, thought Bond as he pushed his way through the swing doors of the salle privee and nodded to the bored man in evening clothes whose job it is to bar your entry and your exit with the electric foot-switch which can lock the doors at any hint of trouble.

And the casino committee would balance its books and break up to its homes or cafes for lunch.

As for robbing the caisse, in which Bond himself was not personally concerned, but only interested, he reflected that it would take ten good men, that they would certainly have to kill one or two employees, and that anyway you probably couldn't find ten non-squeal killers in France, or in any other country for the matter of that.

As he gave a thousand francs to the vestiaire and walked down the steps of the casino. Bond made up his mind that Le Chiffre would in no circumstances try to rob the caisse and he put the contingency out of his mind. Instead he explored his present physical sensations. He felt the dry, uncomfortable gravel under his evening shoes, the bad, harsh taste in his mouth and the slight sweat under his arms. He could feel his eyes filling their sockets. The front of his face, his nose and antrum, were congested. He breathed the sweet night air deeply and focused his senses and his wits. He wanted to know if anyone had searched his room since he had left it before dinner.

He walked across the broad boulevard and through the gardens to the Hotel Splendide. He smiled at the concierge who gave him his key—No 45 on the first floor—and took the cable.

It was from Jamaica and read:

KINGSTONJA XXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXX BOND SPLENDIDE ROYALE-LES-EAUX SEINE INFERIEURE HAVANA CIGAR PRODUCTION ALL CUBAN FACTORIES 1915 TEN MILLION REPEAT TEN MILLION STOP HOPE THIS FIGURE YOU REQUIRE REGARDS.

DASILVA

This meant that ten million francs was on the way to him. It was the reply to a request Bond had sent that afternoon through Paris to his headquarters in London asking for more funds. Paris had spoken to London where Clements, the head of Bond's department, had spoken to M, who had smiled wryly and told 'The Broker' to fix it with the Treasury.

Bond had once worked in Jamaica and his cover on the Royale assignment was that of a very rich client of Messrs Caffery, the principal import and export firm of Jamaica. So he was being controlled through Jamaica, through a taciturn man who was head of the picture desk on the Daily Gleaner, the famous newspaper of the Caribbean.

This man on the Gleaner, whose name was Fawcett, had been bookkeeper for one of the leading turtle fisheries on the Cayman Islands. One of the men from the Caymans who had volunteered on the outbreak of war, he had ended up as a Paymaster's clerk in a small Naval Intelligence organization in Malta. At the end of the war, when, with a heavy heart, he was due to return to the Caymans, he was spotted by the section of the Secret Service concerned with the Caribbean. He was strenuously trained in photography and in some other arts and, with the quiet connivance of an influential man in Jamaica, found his way to the picture desk of the Gleaner.

In the intervals between sifting photographs submitted by the great agencies—Keystone, Wide-World, Universal, INP, and Reuter-Photo—he would get peremptory instructions by telephone from a man he had never met to carry out certain simple operations 1 requiring nothing but absolute discretion, speed, and accuracy. For these occasional services he received twenty pounds a month paid into his account with the Royal Bank of Canada by a fictitious relative in England.

Fawcett's present assignment was to relay immediately to Bond, full rates, the text of messages which he received at home by telephone from his anonymous contact. He had been told by this contact that nothing he would be asked to send would arouse the suspicion of the Jamaican post office. So he was not surprised to find himself suddenly appointed string correspondent for the 'Maritime Press and Photo Agency', with press-collect facilities to France and England, on a further monthly retainer of ten pounds.

He felt secure and encouraged, had visions of a BEM and made the first payment on a Morris Minor. He also bought a green eye-shade which he had long coveted and which helped him to impose his personality on the picture desk.

Some of this background to his cable passed through Bond's mind. He was used to oblique control and rather liked it. He felt it feather-bedded him a little, allowed him to give or take an hour or two in his communications with M. He knew that this was probably a fallacy, that probably there was another member of the Service at Royale-les-Eaux who was reporting independently, but it did give the illusion that he wasn't only 150 miles across the Channel from that deadly office building near Regent's Park, being watched and judged by those few cold brains that made the whole show work. Just as Fawcett, the Cayman Islander in Kingston, knew that if he bought that Morris Minor outright instead of signing the hire-purchase agreement, someone in London would probably know and want to know where the money had come from.

Bond read the cable twice. He tore a telegram form off the pad on the desk (why give them carbon copies?) and wrote his reply in capital letters:

THANKS INFORMATION SHOULD SUFFICE—BOND

He handed this to the concierge and put the cable signed 'Dasilva' in his pocket. The employers (if any) of the concierge could bribe a copy out of the local post office, if the concierge hadn't already steamed the envelope open or read the cable upside down in Bond's hands.

He took his key and said good night and turned to the stairs, shaking his head at the liftman. Bond knew what an obliging danger-signal a lift could be. He didn't expect anyone to be moving on the first floor, but he preferred to be prudent.

Walking quietly up on the balls of his feet, he regretted the hubris of his reply to M via Jamaica. As a gambler he knew it was a mistake to rely on too small a capital. Anyway, M probably wouldn't let him have any more. He shrugged his shoulders and turned off the stairs into the corridor and walked softly to the door of his room.

Bond knew exactly where the switch was and it was with one flow of motion that he stood on the threshold with the door full open, the light on and a gun in his hand. The safe, empty room sneered at him. He ignored the half-open door of the bathroom and, locking himself in, he turned up the bed-light and the mirror-light and threw his gun on the settee beside the window. Then he bent down and inspected one of his own black hairs which still lay undisturbed where he had left it before dinner, wedged into the drawer of the writing-desk.

Next he examined a faint trace of talcum powder on the inner rim of the porcelain handle of the clothes cupboard. It appeared immaculate. He went into the bathroom, lifted the cover of the lavatory cistern and verified the level of the water against a small scratch on the copper ball-cock.

Doing all this, inspecting these minute burglar alarms, did not make him feel foolish or self-conscious. He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession. Routine precautions were to him no more unreasonable than they would be to a deep-sea diver or a test pilot, or to any man earning danger-money.

Satisfied that his room had not been searched while he was at the casino. Bond undressed and took a cold shower. Then he lit his seventieth cigarette of the day and sat down at the writing-table with the thick wad of his stake money and winnings beside him and entered some figures in a small notebook. Over the two days' play, he was up exactly three million francs. In London he had been issued with ten million, and he had asked London for a further ten. With this on its way to the local branch of Credit Lyonnais, his working capital amounted to twenty-three million francs, or some twenty-three thousand pounds.

For a few moments Bond sat motionless, gazing out of the window across the dark sea, then he shoved the bundle of banknotes under the pillow of the ornate single bed, cleaned his teeth, turned out the lights and climbed with relief between the harsh French sheets. For ten minutes he lay on his left side reflecting on the events of the day. Then he turned over and focused his mind towards the tunnel of sleep.

His last action was to slip his right hand under the pillow until it rested under the butt of the .38 Colt Police Positive with the sawn barrel. Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.

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