Thunderball is the ninth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, and the eighth full-length Bond novel. It was first published in 1961. 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. James Bond travels to the Bahamas to work with his friend Felix Leiter from the CIA. Thunderball also introduces SPECTRE's leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in the first of his three appearances in Bond novels.
