For clarity, all book titles and plays are displayed in small caps (Casino Royale), and short stories are shown in quotes and capitalized accordingly (“For Your Eyes Only”). Film titles, on the other hand, are italicized and shown with the capitalization used by the filmmakers (For Your Eyes Only). Quoted passages contain the styles used in the original source.

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) wrote science fiction and humorous stories but is best remembered today for his detective stories. He published three collections of short stories recounting the exploits of the blind detective Max Carrados, the first collection appearing in 1914.
Take your chances and bet your money on different betting games and see if you're lucky enough to sack more cash.

Sections:

Casino Royale 61 Logic Puzzle Game

He was in Germany last year, but, according to information in Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, probably not on a Double-O assignment; that is, he had no assignments between the two and Casino Royale seems to have been his first case as a Double-O. Diamonds Are Forever (1956, Ian Fleming) July 28 to August 13 (about 17 days).

“To thine own self be true” babbles the courtier Polonius to his son Laertes in Act I, Scene iii of Hamlet. It's a welcome bit of sagely advice, except that it's offered by a windbag who, we gather, keeps a one-hitter stashed in his robe, the only credible explanation for his delusion to subvert the royal court of Elsinore. Still, the line harks back to the ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself,” two words etched in stone at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi and uttered by the likes of Heraclitus and Socrates, most likely during potted musings of non-material abstract forms. Hollywood, too, has offered the same wisdom in countless coming-of-age films—for example, films such as Hannah Montana: The Movie (based on a Joseph Conrad novella), where a young girl struggles to come to terms with her pop star alter ego, and Peter Jackson's King Kong, where a giant ape reaches that moment of self-recognition when he realizes he's too heavy to ice skate; and, of course, the recent trend of superhero-origin stories, which depict the main character coming to terms with his true identity as he reaches full superhero statehood.

The theme also returned in Casino Royale, the 2006 classic adventure featuring a bulldozer demolishing an embassy in Madagascar and exquisite cinematography of poker tables in a casino in Montenegro. It's all, however, mere surface gloss to the underlying character development of the hero: a young fledgling James Bond—portrayed by the prematurely aged Daniel Craig—transforms, by film's end, into full 007 superspy stature. As director Martin Campbell explains in early 2005, during preproduction:

“In the new film, Bond is essentially starting out in his career, and has just recently become part of the double-0 section,” says the man who last reinvented Bond in Goldeneye . “The idea is to put a bit of the dash back in Bond. By the end of the movie, the character will have been forged into the wiser, harder Bond we know.” (“Bond To The Beginning”)

I personally had thought that CR (as known to its fans) was a film about a geriatric bodybuilder who goes hunting for caribou with a high-powered rifle in the vicinity of Lake Como—a place of deep solitude and primal forces in nature. Man versus nature, man versus his own alienation in a hostile universe—these were the themes that I thought were unfolding on screen. I am deeply guilty of such unpardonable error. Indeed, when I denounced the movie in my lengthy review, I received a number of emails from fans admonishing me for misreading the film and for neglecting to note the character transformation that occurs at the finale. For example, somebody claiming to be a journalist in beautiful bankrupt Greece wrote to gloat that my lack of refinement is the reason why I don't understand Casino Royale:

You are unable to appreciate a fine work of art because you belong to the lowest order of moviegoers. Casino Royale is the exemplar of fine filmmaking in modern times. It easily belongs to the category of greatest films such as those from Eisenstein, from D.W. Griffith, from Welles, from Godard. This is art film. Can you comprehend what that means? I'll give you a hint: This film traces the biography of a man until he reaches his true identity to complete himself. No where has such a biography of a character been expressed as it has been in Casino Royale in recent times. This movie is not just an action film. It's a character study. The movie speaks to me and to so many others. It expresses the eternal quest for oneself. It conveys the human spirit, and its intelligence fills the void in our hearts. Now we have something worthy to carry with us. You know, I find myself dedicating most of my free time to this movie. I find myself roaming the Internet, joining forums and blogs to defend this movie against your ilk.

In a similar theme, a chap in beautiful bankrupt California expressed, rather eloquently, that Bond's character development in Casino Royale is a dramatic masterpiece:

Dude, you got it all wrong. CR is just too awesome. It's like, you know, a masterpiece, you know, like a painting hanging in an art museum. It's like light years away from all that crap like invisible cars in Die Another Day, so you got it all wrong. CR is just way too awesome, dude, you gotta wake up to that fact. Daniel Craig is just this badass and he, like, changes, you know, at the end. It's like, dude, he becomes this awesome badass like never before, and he's got an attitude, like you don't want to mess with this guy. I'm telling you, dude, that's just too awesome.

It's like, I get it this chap is a communications consultant. Nevertheless, the alleged character development is quite scant in Casino Royale: the film gives the impression that the action sequences consumed the filmmakers, requiring so much concentration, that they forgot about the Bond-Begins angle. Fortunately, they do cram something at the end to address their original intention, which we can only assume reflects the wretched efforts of screenwriter Paul Haggis—a full 5-minute contribution to the production for which he probably received $40 million, or whatever it was he got paid, and for which the film receives an awkward finale that struggles to bring the story back to the origin-reboot premise.

Let us recall the finale of Casino Royale to underscore the praise of the fans: somehow, after surviving torture and a bunch of explosions, and after witnessing the collapse of a building into the canals of Venice, the Craig-Bond—at almost age 40—undergoes a remarkable metamorphosis in the space of an instant. It is a metamorphosis that involves an existential makeover, completing his transformation into the statehood of “Bond,” which is reflected in his new but ugly suit. In this state of enlightenment, he visits Mr. White (a middleman of a terrorist organization) at a villa near Lake Como and starts the conversation with rational discourse by shooting the elderly man in the leg with a high-powered rifle. When Mr. White looks up to see the shooter, he's stunned to see that the Craig-Bond looks older than him, has a bowl haircut, and is wearing an ugly suit. The Craig-Bond strides with confidence and proudly tells Mr. White that his name is “Bond, James Bond,” implying that he has moved beyond common humanity, that in the very depths of his being he holds all the Bondian superspy powers, and that he looks forward to joining The Fantastic Four. The circle is complete. The aged, craggy but young novice secret agent has grown to be the aged, craggy, mature, experienced secret agent. We have, before our eyes, another bildungsroman in the spirit of Nicholas Nickleby. Or it's simply a movie that causes mild nausea.

In Search: The Contemporary Interpretations

So the film's finale, with all its farrago of nonsense, might bear some scrutiny. As my humble contribution to Craig-Bond studies, I contacted Professor Avenarius Basescu, a literary expert renowned for cataloging the imagery of horse flies in pos