Casino Royale (novel)

Casino Royale (novel)

Casino Royale is Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. It paved the way for a further eleven novels by Fleming himself, in addition to two short story collections, followed by many "continuation" Bond novels by other authors.

The story entails James Bond, Agent 007 of the "Secret Service", travelling to the casino at Royale-Les-Eaux in order to bankrupt a fifth-columnist, Le Chiffre, the treasurer of a French union and a member of the Russian secret service. Bond is supported in his endeavours by Vesper Lynd, a member of his own service, as well as Felix Leiter of the CIA and René Mathis of the French Deuxième Bureau.

Since it was first published on 13 April 1953, Casino Royale has been adapted for the screen three times. The first was a 1954 episode of the CBS television series Climax! with Barry Nelson as CIA agent "Jimmy Bond". The first Casino Royale film was a 1967 spoof with David Niven playing "Sir James Bond", with the second being the twenty-first official film in the Eon Productions film series with Daniel Craig as James Bond, released on 17 November 2006. Casino Royale has also been published in comic strip format in a British national newspaper, The Daily Express.

Casino Royale was written by Ian Fleming in Jamaica over a period of around two months, largely from his own experiences and imagination; he also devised the artwork for the cover. The book was given broadly good reviews by the critics at the time and sold out in less than a month in the UK, although US sales a year later were much slower.