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Characters from the movie who appear in the novel:

• M
• Tiffany Case
• Felix Leiter
• Shady Tree
• Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd
  

Novel Synopsis:
The novel opens as M directs Bond to investigate the source of diamonds being smuggled out of Africa. He suspects that that they are being moved through a diamond shop in London owned by Rufus B Saye. Bond impersonates Peter Franks, a currier whom MI6 captured earlier, and meets Tiffany Case, the next stop on the pipeline. She tells Bond that he will smuggle $50,000 worth of diamonds to Shady Tree, a middleman in the pipeline who lives in New York. Tiffany phones her boss, ABC, telling him to expect Bond (disguised as Franks) to arrive the following day with the diamonds. Tiffany says that she'll be watching Bond while he has the diamonds.

Bond delivers the diamonds to Shady, but instead of getting paid, he's told to go to Sarasota, Florida and bet on a horse that's been fixed to win. While in New York, Bond meets up with Felix Leiter, who's missing part of his arm from their last adventure in Harlem in Live and Let Die. Bond agrees to help Felix, who's working to exposean American mob that's involved in fixing horse races. Bond bets on the correct horse, but Felix had bribed the jockey to lose the race. Felix asks Bond to deliver the bribe to the jockey at a mud bath outside of town. Bond arrives at the mud bath to find the jockey being punished by Wint and Kidd, his employers' enforcers. They pour scalding mud on his face. Having reported back to Shady that the horse lost and that he didn't get paid, Bond is told to go to Las Vegas and to bet at a particular blackjack table at The Tiara, owned by Serrafimo Spang. Once he has won his payment, he's ordered to stop betting and to leave the casino. When he arrives, he finds that Tiffany is the dealer and he wins his $5,000. Bond continues to gamble at other tables, and continues to win.

Bond is captured by Spang, co-leader of theSpangled Mob and terminus of the smuggling pipeline. Spang is alerted to Bond's presence by his betting after he was told not to bet any more. Bond is taken to Spectreville, Spang's mock Wild West town and escapes with the help of Tiffany. Bond and Tiffany are trying to outrun Spang's train on a hand-cart. Serrafimo dies as his train crashes into the mountain. After being picked up by Felix, Bond and Tiffany board the Queen Elizabeth, an ocean liner bound for England, when Wint and Kidd kidnap Tiffany. Bond discovers their plot, kills them, and then tosses them in the ocean as a cover-up.

When Bond and Tiffany arrive in London, they figure out that Jack Spang, Serrafimo's brother, is actually the high-profile jeweler, Rufus B. Saye, as well as the mysterious ABC. However, Spang has left to go to Africa to kill the dentist at the beginning of the pipeline. Bond travels to Africa and with the help of the military there, shoots down Spang's helicopter with an anti-aircraft gun after Spang has killed the dentist. The pipeline is sealed.

Differences:

• The movie's main antagonist is Ernst Blofeld, leader of SPECTRE, while it's the Spang brothers, leaders of The Spangled Mob, in the novel.
• Wint and Kidd are never referred to as Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, their homosexuality is implied, and they wear hoods for most of the novel.
• The The crux of the movie is based on Blofeld's impersonation of Willard Whyte and the smuggling of diamonds so they can be used to create a doomsday satellite. In the novel, MI6 is merely concerned because there are a lot of diamonds being smuggled through England.
• Wint and Kidd don't appear until the middle of the novel.
• The The first chapter of the novel is a description of a scorpion by a tree in the desert. The opening sequence of the novel is Wint and Kidd killing the dentist with a scorpion.
• Felix Leiter is a much more robust character in the novel. He is competent, shrewd, intelligent, and witty. Felix can be considered one of the only true friends that Bond develops in the novels. Felix is responsible for helping Bond at the horse races and providing him with a guide while he's in Nevada. He also shows up to help Bond and Tiffany after the affair with Spang's train.
• Wint and Kidd never kill Shady Tree in the novel. They're working together for the same bosses, the Spangs. The pipeline works well and the Spangs don't have any intention of closing it down until much later in the novel when Bond starts interfering.
  
• Wint never flies in the novel.
• The The final scene in the movie has Bond burning Mr. Kidd and flipping Mr. Wint off a balcony after they impersonate room service attendants. In the novel, Bond shoots them both after they have kidnapped Tiffany. He then decides to stuff them out of the small porthole.
• Bond Bond reveals his memories, his thought processes, and emotions to the reader in the novel. This provides a "thicker" character than in the novels. We are able to compare what Bond does with what he was thinking and feeling.
• By By the end of the novel, we are convinced that Bond and Tiffany are truly in love. We see Tiffany develop from a isolated, prudish character to a warm and thoughtful character. Tiffany's back-story of being a rape victim and being born into prostitution help round out her character in the novel. She is relatively two-dimensional in the movie.
• The The mud bath scene occurred in both the novel and the movie, but the similarity ends there. The mud in the novel was therapeutic and used by the jockey who lost the horse race to keep his weight down. The mud in the movie was used in some kind of cloning process byBlofeld.
• The The final chapter of the novel has Bond returning to Africa to shut down the start of the pipeline. While there, he watches the dentist be killed by Saye. In the movie, the dentist is killed by Wint and Kidd in the opening scene.
  
  

Inconsistencies:
At the beginning of the novel, the head of MI5 tells Bond that the diamonds originate in Sierra Leone, however later in the novel, the dentist is described as speaking Afrikaans, a language confined to South Africa with a few speakers in the surrounding countries. Therefore, it's unclear what the African country is where the diamonds originate.