Introducing James Bond: charming, sophisticated, handsome, chillingly ruthless and licensed to kill. This, the first of Ian Fleming's tales of secret agent 007, finds Bond on a mission to neutralize a lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called simply "le Chiffre" -- by ruining him at the Baccarat table and forcing his Soviet spymasters to "retire" him. It seems that lady luck is taken with 007 -- le Chiffre has hit a losing streak. But some people just refuse to play by the rules, and Bond's attraction to a beautiful female agent leads him to disaster and an unexpected savior...
A British author and journalist. IAN FLEMING, creator of the world's best-known secret agent, was consultant on foreign affairs to the *London Sunday Times*. In all, he wrote thirteen **James Bond** novels. The twelfth, *You Only Live Twice*, is published in hardcover by New American Library; the thirteenth, *The Man with the Golden Gun*, was published in the spring of 1965. Mr. Fleming died August 12, 1964, at the age of fifty-six.
