Topic: Blofeld's sense of morality
I’m reading Thunderball at the moment, and have just come to the part describing the SPECTRE meeting. In it, Blofeld kills one of his operatives for sexually violating a 17 year-old girl that SPECTRE had kidnapped and held to ransom. We learn that Blofeld, on hearing that one of his operatives had assaulted the girl, returns a large part of the ransom money to the girl’s parents as an act of contrition.
Having only just come to the Bond novels, and only knowing about Blofeld from the films, I was startled by this. In the films, he is portrayed as a caricature, a stereotypical villain, whereas in the books (or at least in Thunderball) he has a sense of morality.