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

I was, of course, aware of the phenomenon of James Bond well before I knew there were books, before I knew who wrote them and when, and, before I even knew there were movies. By this, I mean that my introduction to James Bond was through the videogame GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64. I grew up in a somewhat sheltered household, and for a long time I was not allowed to play games that featured such explicit violence (not that I am complaining about the copious amounts of time I sunk into Super Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64 instead), so for a long time I only knew the game vicariously through my brother’s recollections of playing the game at sleepovers. When we finally added the game to our own collection—because a friend had upgraded to an Xbox and donated his collection of Nintendo 64 games—we had to play the game in “paintball mode” which made the bullets show up as paint splatters.

Fast forward a couple decades and I am starting at the beginning, Casino Royale, written in 1953 by Ian Fleming. It is remarkable how well developed the character of James Bond is right from the start—his penchants for smoking relentlessly and various forms of alcohol; a love for fast cars; his ruthless diligence in taking care of himself and doing the logical thing rather than the easy thing; an analytical mind. It’s all there.

The book reads like a movie (and despite being the first book in the series, Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig in his first outing as 007, was not made until 2006). The book never approaches the realm of the literary, and for the most part is a straight up thriller. It is a bit of a slow burner at the beginning, with much of the “action” centered around a game of baccarat at the Royale-les-Eaux Casino in France. Following the high-stakes game, the story picks up some speed.

Paired with the first of many Bond girls, Vesper Lynd, as well as CIA agent Felix Leiter, Bond is able to foil the initial plans of Le Chiffre by winning the game of baccarat, which consequently incurs the wrath of Le Chiffre. Vesper is kidnapped and Bond tortured for the location of his winnings.

We are introduced to the mysterious organization known as SMERSH—a Russian organization that will feature in several novels throughout the series—who Le Chiffre had been working for. He had lost a substantial amount of money and the baccarat game had been an attempt to win it back. While Bond is having his genitals mutilated by Le Chiffre, a SMERSH agent silently enters and kills Le Chiffre for having lost the money, and leaves Bond alive after carving a symbol into Bond’s hand which identifies him as a spy.

The remainder of the novel details Bond’s recovery, his attempt to develop a relationship with Vesper, and his contemplations on the reasoning behind some long-held beliefs. There is a chapter toward the end of the novel that includes a thoughtful conversation between Bond and a French agent named Mathis in which Bond questions his actions, his philosophies, and whether he is fighting for the right side.

Bond describes the two of his kills in the past few years, then continues:

‘For those two jobs I was awarded a Double O number in the Service. Felt pretty clever and got a reputation for being good and tough. A double O number in our Service means you’ve had to kill a chap in cold blood in the course of some job.

‘Now,’ he looked up again at Mathis, ‘that’s all very fine. The hero kills two villains, but when the hero Le Chiffre starts to kill the villain Bond and the villain Bond knows he isn’t a villain at all, you see the other side of the medal. The villains and heroes get all mixed up.

‘Of course,’ he added, as Mathis started to expostulate, ‘patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.’

It might be good, or it may have simply caught me off guard—this is supposed to be our introduction James Bond—that means guns, explosions, flipped cars, and of course the demise of the bad guy. Obviously since there are dozens of books, films, and games after this he doesn’t follow through on his thoughts, but it was a pleasant surprise to see some moral contemplation mixed in with the fantastical spy thriller elements.

With the detailed explanation of the baccarat, and the confusing romantic pursuit at the end, it doesn’t seem that the rest of the novel is strong enough to have launched a franchise that lives on to this day, but I’m not representative of the general public taste, let alone that of the 50s.