Jeffery Deaver on why James Bond is a hero for all seasons

Jeffery Deaver puts the longevity of Ian Fleming's spy down to the simple virtues of courage and duty - reports The Telegraph.

The Cold War is a faded blip on most of our radar screens, yet those of us who were around in the 1950s and 1960s will recall vividly the undercurrent of uneasiness pervading our lives. In America schoolchildren would regularly practise "duck and cover" exercises, hiding beneath their desks in a manoeuvre that, somehow, was supposed to save them from Soviet nuclear bombs detonating overhead.

It was an era when the press reported daily – and harrowingly – on the conflict between enemies who used espionage, violence and regime change to further their opposing ideologies.

Not enormously different from today, come to think of it.

So it's not surprising that the essential hero of the Cold War – Ian Fleming's fictional spy, James Bond – remains so well loved.

When I call Bond a "hero" I offer that description with no qualification. The Cold War, like most of the novels inspired by it, was typified by moral ambiguity. Think Cold War spy, and the word "antihero" comes to mind.

This is not James Bond.

He is a classic adventure-story hero. He confronts evil. Simple as that. He may wrestle from time to time with the question of which causes are good, which are bad and how to tell them apart, but at heart his philosophy is best articulated by a fellow spy who tells him, "Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles."

And, though his creator doesn't dull the storytelling with platitudes about courage and sacrifice, Bond never hesitates to do his duty on behalf of those human beings, and to take on the most dangerous and resourceful villains, against all odds.

A superhero then?

No, that's not Bond either. He's utterly human. Bond is, he's the first to admit, nothing more than a civil servant; even his name is mundane (Fleming borrowed it from an ornithologist).

He chain-smokes. He orders whisky with lunch and later a sizeable cocktail of vodka, gin and Lillet which he imbibes shortly before he goes on a critical assignment. Copious champagne follows all the way through the small hours.

He packs away a lot of cholesterol with his sumptuous meals and, when he meets the attractive woman operative he'll be working with, his initial thoughts regarding her are decidedly not about her professional skills.

He doubts, he questions, he makes mistakes.

And he is, by the way, a killer.

Though a damn suave one.

"It's not difficult to get a Double 0 number if you're prepared to kill people," Bond says. "That's all the meaning it has… It's a confusing business but if it's one's profession, one does what one's told. How do you like the grated egg with your caviar?"

Casino Royale adheres to the structure of many classic adventure tales, beginning in medias res with a scene of foreboding. This is followed by a flashback to our hero being recruited for his quest and a bit of exposition. Then quickly we're back to the ongoing story, racing along on a roller coaster of action and intrigue, the author's finger firmly on the pulse of our grown-up fantasies.

In Casino Royale Bond is given £25,000 (that's in 1950s currency, no less) and told to use it to bankrupt the villain on the gambling floor, while on full expenses on the French coast, assisted by some particularly gorgeous love interest.

Come on, does it get any better than that?

There are sweaty-palm scenes aplenty (including an intense showdown at a high-stakes card game), mouth-watering descriptions of food and wine, and a few helpings of sex (passions clear but the specifics left to the imagination, thus making the whole affair, so to speak, provocative rather than tawdry).

Casino Royale, published in 1953, was the first of the Bond books. It was also one of the first novels to use the concept of branding in popular fiction. Products are named and opinions offered. It's fun to read about what the other half spends its money on, of course, but, more important for the effectiveness of a book, the product placements make the stories concrete.

Fleming was a fine travel writer, too (check out Thrilling Cities), and we quickly come to know and appreciate the locales in the book as we do the characters.

All this is imparted in Fleming's characteristic style, reflecting his years as a working journalist. The prose is lean, often wry and never self-conscious. He employs words the way Bond does weapons: without flourish. They get the job done.

We find some plot twists along the way, well thought-out and executed, but Fleming is not a sleight-of-hand author. We know pretty much who the knight is and what the evil monarch is up to.

We don't need to bother ourselves about whether the king is in fact the knight's long-lost brother or his sidekick is a turncoat working for the ousted queen or if the warrior who gave our hero the magic sword is really the regent's spy or… Well, you get the idea.

Excessive cleverness can be rather exhausting, and Fleming never lets complexity hamper his goal of speeding us through the story while we hold on for dear life.

But while the novel is great fun, don't think of Casino Royale as anything frothy. Fleming's no stranger to cynicism, grit or the noir elements of the genre.

I was going to conclude by saying that James Bond is a hero for our times but, on reflection, I think that's wrong. Bond is a hero for all time, and Fleming's novels feed a universal hunger people have always had for stories about all-too-human characters who are always willing to confront evil, whatever sacrifices have to be made.

And, OK, it doesn't hurt that he has a turbocharged Bentley, a passion for foie gras and an impressive capacity for Taittinger champagne.

This is an edited extract from Jeffery Deaver's introduction to a new edition of Ian Fleming's 'Casino Royale', published by Viking on October 26 at £6.99 (pbk). The new film will be released on November 17.

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