"Casino Royale" was Ian Fleming's first Bond novel. It grew out of a stunt that Fleming and a couple of other Naval Intelligence people came up with during World War II. They were in Lisbon, and they found that several German agents were busily cleaning up at the chemin de fer tables with the idea of using their winnings to finance espionage operations. Fleming's idea was for British agents to gang up on the Germans and wipe them out at the tables, scuttling their scheme. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and there were various reports as to what actually happened, but less biased reports said that the plan was a flop. Fleming and his cohorts wound up losing their butts to the Germans.

But Fleming thought it was a great idea—in theory. And when he turned his hand to novel writing, he assigned his newly hatched fictional agent, James Bond, to give Le Chiffre, an agent for SMERSH, a Russian assassination agency, a drubbing at the baccarat tables. As I recall, Le Chiffre had made some bad investments with SMERSH's money (string of brothels, I think), and if his bosses found out, his ass was grass, so he was trying to replace the funds with his winnings. Bond was known to be a handy fellow at the tables, so he was assigned to make sure Le Chiffre lost, and let Le Chiffre's bosses "neutralize" him. The plot took off from there.

The novel was good. I saw the movie with David Niven on TV and thought it was generally idiotic. Four James Bonds? I mean, what in the hell were they trying to do? The best thing about the movie was Orson Welles as Le Chiffre. I am filled with fear and trembling at the thought of what they've probably done with this one.

Don Firth