The second half is a love story, as Bond recovers from a vicious beating. We first meet James Bond in the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, at the end of a night of gambling and the first half of the book deals with his mission to beat Le Chiffre at the card tables.
Although the plot is on the whole straightforward, it has enough of a spark of originality and daring to pull the reader into the story and finishes with a bitter twist in its tail. It is extremely short, especially by the standards of the twenty-first century, and structurally is almost two separate but intertwined stories. It is one of the more polished of the books with the casino scenes vividly painted by Fleming. The operation is designed to discredit Le Chiffre, in the belief that the Russians will executed him as a traitor, and wiping out their carefully built up French network. The plot was inspired by an experience he had in Estoril during the Second World War that he later heavily embellished.
