Forever and a Day

by Anthony Horowitz

A prequel to the events of Casino Royale, the book recounts Bond's first mission as a double-0 agent, his status recently earned by killing a wartime traitor in Stockholm.

Set in the French Riviera in 1950, Bond investigates the killing of the previous man designated 007 and resumes his final mission: determine what is behind the sudden lack of drug activity in the Corsican underworld. He develops his affinity for high-stakes casinos and fine hotels, where he meets Joanne "Sixtine / Madame 16" Brochet, a former British operative who leads him to Corsica mob boss Jean-Paul Scipio. Everything appears to point to the morbidly obese Scipio, head of a chemical company that serves as a front for his heroin business, but Bond discovers a larger network of organised crime and an American multi-millionaire named Irwin Wolfe.