On screen, Thunderball was released in 1965 as the fourth film in the Eon Productions series, with Sean Connery as James Bond. The Daily Express strip was cut short on the order of its owner, Lord Beaverbrook, after Ian Fleming signed an agreement with The Sunday Times to publish a short story. Thunderball has been adapted three times, once in a comic strip format for the Daily Express newspaper and twice for the cinema.

Thunderball also introduces SPECTRE's leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in the first of three appearances in Bond novels, with On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice being the others. James Bond, Secret Service operative 007, travels to the Bahamas to work with his friend Felix Leiter, seconded back into the CIA for the investigation.

The first novelization 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, although the controversial shared credit of Fleming, McClory and Whittingham was the result of a courtroom decision.The story centres on the theft of two atomic bombs by the crime syndicate SPECTRE and the subsequent attempted blackmail of the Western powers for their return. It was first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 27 March 1961, where the initial print run of 50,938 copies quickly sold out. Thunderball is the ninth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, and the eighth full-length James Bond novel. Great black and white photo of Fleming on the rear panel. Small chips and light wear at the top and bottom edges of the spine ends and at the corners. net' at the bottom of the inside front flap and 3 paragraphs about Thunderball on the front inside flap followed by a biographical blurb about Ian Fleming. In the striking pictorial dust jacket designed by Richard Chopping featuring a knife stabbing the Queen of Hearts through skeletal fingers. A near-fine copy handsomely bound in finely textured black cloth with a blind stamped skeletal hand on the front boards and gold lettering on the spine.

Thunderball first edition