Gamesters

“Almost all the best novelists include big set pieces in their novels, and Fleming was no exception. Casinos and gambling provide the ultimate in heightened atmosphere, visual drama, tension, conflict and the see-saw of emotions. That apparently staid Victorian Anthony Trollope gives us a fine gambling scene in the first Palliser novel, Can you Forgive her? when Burgo Fitzgerald loses everything in a desperate game of roulette, and the even staider George Eliot whips up a colourful frenzy in a casino in Baden-Baden, at the beginning of Daniel Deronda. And Thomas Hardy has two men playing dice at night by the light of glow-worms on Egdon Heath, in The Return of the Native. 

Fleming’s best-known gambling scene is probably in Casino Royale, and it is very good, but that in Moonraker is perhaps even better. 

Sir Hugo Drax, pillar of the British establishment, knighted for services to his country, potential saviour of its land and citizens, is revealed early on in the book to have a character flaw, other than a nasty temper :

‘There’s only one thing …’ M. tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. 

‘What’s that, sir?’ asked Bond … 

‘Sir Hugo Drax cheats at cards.’ 

And so the scene is set for the great Bridge game, in which James discovers how Drax is cheating and exposes him, winning himself £15,000 in the process – perhaps £150,000 in today’s money. 

The Game takes place at Blades, the archetypal St James’s gambling club, of which Fleming gives both a good potted history and a magnificent description. 

The food and wine are superlative, the club servants impeccable. The scene, in which the room and its tables gradually fill up and the games commence, with a pall of cigar and cigarette smoke hanging under the shaded lamps, is one of Fleming’s best pieces of writing. We can taste the food, smell the cigars, hear the chink of ice and the click of the freshly opened packs of cards. 

To appreciate the course of The Game, what exactly it is that both Drax and Bond do, and to understand the outcome fully, it is helpful to know Bridge well. But I do not, and I can still follow what is going on and feel the mounting tension as Drax gets bolder and bolder, before suddenly realising what is happening. 

Many a Bond action scene and unlikely escape from almost certain death set the pulses racing, but this quiet, brilliant scenario is the finest thing Fleming ever wrote.”