There is a murder and other deaths as well as injuries, vomiting, and space brawls, all reported in close detail. The crisis created by this bungled attempt at space vandalism establishes the main narrative thread, with Zemeckis back at Mission Control in Houston struggling to keep the mission going. Initially charged with collecting geological samples and sabotaging the new Russian moon rover, the three astronauts are then told to sabotage the Russians' new spy satellite, which is thought to be unmanned but is not.

In the event, Apollo 18 is a complex mission. This makes the first part of the novel so technically focused that it seems the action will never get off the launchpad, though doubtless there are readers who will revel in these details. There are more moving parts to this novel than there are in a Saturn V, and Hadfield is careful to give each part a complete description: provenance, purpose, design, and in-use characteristics are all faithfully recorded.

Hadfield's use of real people brings historical authenticity to the novel, and there are many tidbits of NASA lore that only an insider could provide, but the devotion to technical facts has some drawbacks. Repurposed as a crew liaison for NASA, Zemeckis is involved in both the training for and the mission of Apollo 18. The story opens with not one but two aircraft episodes-a bird strike wrecks an F-4 Phantom and a Cessna 170B is taken out for a rhapsodic spin-then follows the developing career of Kaz Zemeckis, who, until the bird strike cost him an eye, had been a military astronaut with good prospects of going to the moon.

Incorporating real-life characters and events, spanning decades and distances both terrestrial and translunar, this NASA-heavy thriller has everything, including perhaps a bit too many meticulously reported technical procedures. A vast Cold War space thriller from astronaut Hadfield.

The apollo murders