The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield is book one of the series The Apollo Murders. Kazimieras Zemeckis, known as Kaz, is a former military pilot turned flight controller who is tasked with overseeing the upcoming NASA launch of Apollo 18. Something that is complicated by the Soviet Union launching Almaz, a spy space station with some pretty advanced capabilities. Now what should have been a regular flight to the moon is instead a flight to the moon with a side helping of space based sabotage. They also end up changing the landing destination on the moon to investigate the new soviet rover that has recently landed. With this already putting excess stress on Kaz and the rest of the crew things just continue getting worse when the designated pilot has an unusual helicopter crash and is killed instantaneously. Now they have to rush and prep the substitute pilot and mission commander while still prepping for the sabotage mission. Just when they think everything will be fine when they have a safe launch, things quickly continue spiraling. The Soviet spy space station is not quite as abandoned and unoccupied as they had thought and now they are looking for a clash in space.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this one but it ended up being an awesome read. It drew you in right from the start and kept you hooked until the end of the story while also making you want to read the next book. I was intrigued by the story as it sounded rather interesting and not even close to something you would normally see. It definitely gets points for being original. The balancing of the different layers and elements of the story was also well done and I was impressed by how that all ended up playing out. There was the ongoing mystery of what caused the helicopter crash and then the drama, competition and espionage between the United States and the Soviet Union was also pretty entertaining to see. However, the thing that really caught my attention was the detail used when covering the interactions between the two sides as well as the immense amount of detail that was included when describing anything to do with the space launch and the rockets, both of which added some great layers of authenticity and realism to the story. That is really only to be expected considering the author is a former astronaut but still it was nice to see. What was nice about this was that it was included but it didn’t bog down the story or detract from what was going on. This one definitely gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from me.
I think this book would probably be considered a historical thriller and would hold the most appeal to readers who tend to enjoy either historical fiction or thrillers or both. It would also appeal to anybody interested in the Cold War and the Space Race as well. The book is pretty good but there are minor levels of violence present and a semi-graphic description of the helicopter crash and dead bodies in general so be prepared for that one. I would still feel pretty good about recommending it to adult or young adult readers as well as older teens, probably no one younger than about fifteen or so though. It was still a great book and one that I thoroughly enjoyed so I hope you will consider trying it out. If you do, feel free to share your thoughts about it in the comments.