Topic: I've Read "Thunderball".
I've finally gotten round to reading to reading Thunderball, the nuclear warhead caper that nearly sank the Bond movie franchise and helped push an already unhealthy Fleming into a comparatively early grave. 
It features the world threatening crime syndicate SPECTRE as the principle antagonists, although unlike in the Connery movies they're a relatively more grounded group of criminals and spies who came in from other intelligence/crime organizations, their global headquarters more like a law firm instead of a hollowed out volcano.
Ernst Stavro Blofeld is quite different to the several movie Blofeld's and in my mind the literary Blofeld resembles UK actor Alfred Molina, with no bald head and no Persian cat, perhaps a mildly cultivated and intelligent thug along the lines of Josef Stalin or Martin Bormann.
As with Dr. No more of Fleming's childish racism and misogyny shines through like a lighthouse (with charming lines like "Negro pride" and "Italian superstition"), although not quite as brightly. The villain's plan is just like in the movie, although it is insinuated SPECTRE's goal was never world domination with the theft of the RAF warhead being a final heist that would make SPECTRE's members for life. Largo seems more impressive in the book than he was in the movie.
Then we are introduced to Felix and the CIA, with a US Navy nuclear submarine (the USS Manta) being the cavalry, although I'm puzzled why the Manta's crew were not armed with harpoon guns like their SPECTRE opposition from the Disco (Largo's boat was also more eloquent in the book to what we got on screen).
And Kevin McClory, despite his genuinely sad fate, was a prat.
