In the novel, Bond's mission is to infiltrate a diamond smuggling ring starting in Sierra Leone. After Special Branch picks up a country house burglar-turned smuggler named Peter Franks, Bond assumes the role of Franks to follow the trail to New York. With the help of fellow smuggler Tiffany Case and his old friend Felix Leiter, Bond learns that the operation is being run by The Spangled Mob, led by the brothers Jack and Seraffimo Spang out of Las Vegas.
In the film, Bond infiltrates the pipeline as it's apparently being closed down and the smugglers are turning up dead. He soon learns that the ring is being masterminded by SPECTRE and Blofeld, whom he'd believed to be dead. Blofeld is stockpiling the diamonds for their refractive properties to make an orbital laser weapon, which he uses to destroy American, Russian, and Chinese nuclear weapons and then offer to the highest bidder.
The novel version of Diamonds Are Forever is the first book in the series where the antagonists are not affiliated with the Soviet Union in any way. In the film, they use SPECTRE, mainly because world domination and super-weapon plots had become part of the formula since the adaptation of Goldfinger. Blofeld and SPECTRE hadn't appeared in the books at this point, but there is a part of the story which takes place in "Spectreville", and old western ghost town which Seraffimo Spang had converted into a private retreat.
Spang also travels in a private train, an element which appears in Goldeneye; Alec Trevelyan travels in an armoured train which had previously been used to transport missiles, which reflects the post-Cold War setting of that film.
A lot of changes had to be made in the film due to the order of the films being different to the order of the books. For example, the previous film had been On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which ended with the murder of Bond's wife by Blofeld. The pre-title sequence involves Bond hunting Blofeld down.
Another example of this kind of change happens with Felix Leiter. He'd been maimed by a shark in Live and Let Die, and is now working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. In the film series, he doesn't get maimed until the sixteenth film, License to Kill, so he's still working with the CIA. Even though the CIA is not meant to have jurisdiction on American soil.
There are some changes which make sense, and offer the opportunity for expansion. In the book, Bond smuggles the diamonds to the United States by hiding them in golf balls. I've heard that it's possible to open up a golf ball, but is highly dangerous and ill-advised. In the film, Bond has to intercept Peter Franks in Amsterdam after the smuggler escapes from custody. After killing him in a very creative fight scene, Bond uses the body to transport the diamonds. That seems to be more plausible than using golf balls.
The film does retain some imagery from the book, but uses them differently. One example involves characters being drowned in hot mud. In the novel, Bond's payout for delivering the diamond is obtained by betting on a rigged horse race. When Leiter bribes the jockey to get himself disqualified, Bond goes to a mud bath to make the payoff. It's here he encounters Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, the Spangled Mob's enforcers, who "discipline" the jockey with what's at hand.
Another example is a scorpion. The novel opens from the perspective of a scorpion, which is promptly crushed by the first smuggler in the pipeline, a dentist who pays miners to hide the diamonds in their mouths so he can extract them during a routine appointment. In the final chapter, Jack Spang kills the dentist by putting the scorpion in his mouth when he closes the pipeline. Spang himself is killed by Bond, who shoots down his helicopter with an anti-aircraft gun.
A similar scene happens at the beginning of the film (even opening with a shot of the scorpion). This time, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd meet the dentist, and Wint drops the scorpion down his back. They later meet a pilot due to collect the diamonds from the dentist, killing him with a bomb hidden in the package they hand over.
All in all, I think the film could have gotten away with killing Blofeld at the beginning and using conventional villains. It could have been an interesting break from the usual SPECTRE plots.
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