CASINO ROYALE (Ian Fleming) - March 30/06

The first James Bond book and it's pretty engaging. Not a whole lot happens, though there are a few genuinely exciting sequences (the gun in Bond's back at the casino, the torture sequence, etc). Bond is revealed to be a fairly human figure, though the death of Vesper Lynd seemingly turns him into the cool-as-ice figure he's best known as ("the bitch is dead"). *** out of ****