The first novelisation of an unfilmed James Bond screenplay, it was born from a collaboration by five people: Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, Ivar Bryce and Ernest Cuneo.

The story centres on the theft of a pair of nuclear weapons by the crime organisation SPECTRE and the subsequent attempted blackmail of the Western powers for their return.

James Bond of the Secret Service travels to the Bahamas to work with his friend Felix Leiter, who had been seconded back into the CIA for the investigation.

During a meeting with his superior, M, the Secret Service agent James Bond learns that his latest physical assessment is poor because of excessive drinking and smoking.

Bond is saved by a nurse and later retaliates by trapping Lippe in a steam bath, causing second-degree burns and sending him to hospital for a week.

The Prime Minister receives a communiqué from SPECTRE (the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a private criminal enterprise under the command of Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

SPECTRE has hijacked a Villiers Vindicator aircraft and seized its two nuclear bombs, which it will use to destroy two major targets in the Western hemisphere unless a ransom is paid.

Lippe was dispatched to the clinic to oversee Giuseppe Petacchi, an Italian Air Force pilot stationed at a nearby bomber squadron base, and post the communiqué once the bombs were in SPECTRE's possession.

Acting as a NATO observer of Royal Air Force procedure, Petacchi is being paid by SPECTRE to hijack the bomber in mid-flight by killing its crew and flying it to the Bahamas, where he ditches it in the ocean and it sinks in shallow water.

SPECTRE kills Petacchi, camouflages the wreck and transfers the nuclear bombs onto the cruiser yacht Disco Volante for transport to an underwater hiding place.

Bond and Leiter alert the Thunderball war room of their suspicions of Largo and join the crew of the American nuclear submarine Manta as the ransom deadline nears.

The author Ian Fleming had long considered the possibility of his literary creation James Bond appearing on screen, and he had been in discussion with the filmmaker Sir Alexander Korda about a version of the 1954 novel Live and Let Die, although this came to nothing.

[14] Much of the attraction Fleming felt working alongside McClory was based on The Boy and the Bridge,[16] which was the official British entry to the 1959 Venice Film Festival.

[38] On 19 November 1963 the case of McClory and Whittingham v Fleming, Jonathan Cape Ltd and Bryce was heard at the Chancery Division of the High Court; it lasted three weeks.

[54] Bond's examination of the hull of Disco Volante was inspired by the ill-fated mission undertaken on 19 April 1956 by "Buster" Crabb, the ex-Royal Navy frogman, on behalf of MI6.

[67] Leiter's humour is the source of the verbal comedy in the book;[67][68] the incapacity he suffered in Live and Let Die had not led to bitterness or to his being unable to join in with the underwater fight scene towards the end of the novel.

[73] The cultural historians Janet Woollacott and Tony Bennett see masculine aspects to Domino's character which manifest as "excessive aggressiveness and over-dominating bearing" which, they say, could be connected to her full first name, Dominetta, which translates as "little dominator".

[76][g] Emilio Largo is the head of the SPECTRE team involved in stealing the nuclear bombs, and despite being the main adversary for Bond, he is not the primary antagonist, which is Blofeld.

[83] Blofeld's ancestry shows he is Polish and Greek and, during the Second World War, he had betrayed Poland by working with the Abwehr, the Nazi military-intelligence service.

"[89] To achieve this he used well-known brand names and everyday details to produce a sense of realism,[89][90] which the writer Kingsley Amis called "the Fleming effect".

[100] Black argues that SPECTRE represents "evil unconstrained by ideology"[101] and it partly came about because the decline of the British Empire led to a lack of certainty in Fleming's mind.

[102] Although the thaw in relations was present during the writing of Thunderball, the Cold War escalated again shortly afterwards, with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis all occurring in an eighteen-month period from April 1961 to November 1962.

On 20 July 1960 Fleming wrote to him to ask if he could undertake the art for the next book, agreeing on a fee of 200 guineas, and instructed: "The picture would consist of the skeleton of a man's hand with the fingers resting on the queen of hearts.

[112] In 1965 a special edition was produced to tie in with the release of the film Thunderball with a promotional tie-in with Player's Navy Cut, based on a passage in the book where Domino discusses a story behind the sailor in the logo.

"[104] The upshot, in the critic's opinion, was that "the mixture—of good living, sex and violent action—is as before, but this is a highly polished performance, with an ingenious plot well documented and plenty of excitement.

"[120] Poore identified aspects of the author's technique to be part of the success, saying "the suspense and the surprises that animate the novel arise from the conceits with which Mr. Fleming decorates his tapestry of thieving and deceiving".

[120] Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, Philip John Stead thought that Fleming "continues uninhibitedly to deploy his story-telling talents within the limits of the Commander Bond formula",[121] while "the usual beatings-up, modern style, are ingeniously administered to lady and gentleman alike".

[121] As to why the novels were so appealing, Stead considered that "Fleming's special magic lies in his power to impart sophistication to his mighty nonsense; his fantasies connect with up-to-date and lively knowledge of places and of the general sphere of crime and espionage.

The owner of the Daily Express, Lord Beaverbrook, cancelled the strip on 10 February 1962 after Fleming signed an agreement with The Sunday Times for them to publish the short story "The Living Daylights".

[129] In the 1990s McClory announced plans to make another adaptation of the Thunderball story, Warhead 2000 AD, with Timothy Dalton or Liam Neeson in the lead role, but this was eventually dropped.