One of the reasons for the success of Casino Royale - the first of the James Bond books - and indeed, the success of the James Bond books and then the films is the combination of girls, guns, fast cars and exotic locations, all of which combined to produce a mixture that was unlike anything seen before by 1950s readers.
Here was escapism featuring the glamour of the Casino, fine wines accompanying haut cuisine and cold war villains that definitely played outside the rules. While the films made us get used to a huge range of improbably gadgets, the literary James Bond mainly relied on his wits.
In Casino Royale the gadgets are missing completely, although it does cross 007's mind that he might be able to extricate himself from a problematic situation if only he had a hidden weapon, with nothing to save him but his wits or just plain luck; only when these both appear to have deserted him does he wish for a quick death.
Compared with the films that came the following decade, the plot of Casino Royale has a straightforward plot which is easy to follow. With a single location too, it is a far cry from the continent hopping secret agent we are accustomed to today.
And while northern France may not seem particularly exotic a location to a modern reader, Normandy casinos were only for the wealthy in the days before mass tourism, bearing in mind that post war rationing was still in place when the book was published.
Even his relationship with the Bond girl might be unfamiliar. Vesper Lynd is a dark haired beauty who Bond initially finds quite cold. However, Vesper thaws out and James Bond falls in love with her, and gets close to marrying her. It is only at the novel's end that we find out that she wasn't all she appeared to be and rather than helping Bond had actually betrayed him.
You can easily find the Bond books, which are available from Amazon and all good bookstores.
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