The Apollo Murders

I was intrigued by the concept of The Apollo Murders and as far as space thrillers go this was highly enjoyable.

At times the technical jargon was a little overwhelming at the sacrifice of the characters in the beginning, but after a slow start the story exploded I found myself eager to pick it up. Hadfield is an astronaut first and author second and the detail of procedures, the confined spaces and communication between astronauts and mission control contributed to the immersion of the story.

I felt that The Apollo Murders could have been a potential story arc on For All Mankind and my admiration of Mankind probably added to my enjoyment of Apollo Murders.

The book is a solid 3.5 but I wouldn't rank it in the really like category so in the end it's a very strong 3/5 with an endorsement to read for anyone who enjoys space and historical fiction mixed together.

I've got a love-hate relationship with Chris Hadfield. I love him because he's super-intelligent, fascinating, charismatic, handsome, nearly superhuman in every way, he made a music video in space, he's a natural educator, and it turns out that he's a talented author. I hate him - just a little bit - for all the same reasons. Jeez, the guy's perfect. He makes the rest of us look bad!

I had no idea that he wrote this book until I received it as a present, and I was immediately drawn to it. He's managed to create such an engaging story with some great characters and tons of action. At times, I wondered how realistic some of the story could be, then I remembered that it was written by a guy who has literally lived in space.

I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'm so reluctant to say too much about the story. There's absolutely no part of the story that is predictable. It could always go either way.

I really recommend that everybody reads the prologue, just to get a taste. Seriously, after the first three or four pages, you'll be hooked.

Preordered this book and just finished reading it, and while it's an interesting read with lots of credible technical detail and a very believable alternate history in which Apollo 18 did not get cancelled, I'm a little disappointed also. Three main disappointments:

1, as a whodunnit it's extremely obvious whodunnit almost from the time of the murder. The death happens on page 80; they realize it wasn't an accident on past 125; and by page 151 it was pretty obvious who was responsible, even though the protagonis doesn't figure it out till page 425.

2, it's just not that well written; it's okay, but clunky, the type of writing that you learn to read the story through, rather than the type of writing that sucks you in and makes the story flow naturally. Far too much jumping around between different characters and different scenes within the first section; forced descriptions of characters, e.g. "he looked in the mirror, assessing what he saw. Six foor, 173 pounds (need to buy a scale), dark chest hair, pale skin..."

3, the protagonist Kaz Zemeckis is in a senior advisory role on the Apollo 18 project and meets various members of the flight and science teams when he arrives at the base. Among them Laura, an attractive geologist he rapidly learns is trying to learn to fly in order to qualify as a future astronayt, but having trouble affording the lessons. Almost immediately - their second conversation I think - he invites her to come over to his house where she can try flying his private plane; and it's made very clear that he's offering this because he finds her attractive, not because of any altruistic intent or feeling of camaraderie or wish to help less privileged minorities qualify for the astronautics program. No, he invites her over for exactly one reason, because she's pretty and he's lonely, and sure enough after they get back to his house after flying he puts the moves on. This is, unfortunately, probably a pretty reasonable depiction of how things would have happened at the time (1970s), and any woman in a situation like poor Laura was probably frequently in a situation where she was being dangled offers that would progress her career but which came with hopeful strings attached, and must have had to constantly navigate between them. What I found distasteful was less the facts of the era, and more that the author writing this in the 2020s wrote it so completely matter-of-factly as if the protagonist's actions were something he found completely normal and would have done himself. There was no apparent awareness of Laura's perspective or situation, in fact we never really see her as an autonomous person at all, only through Kaz's eyes. While there's no sign she's uninterested, there's also no sign she's interested; in fact there's no sign she's a real human being at all, because we only see her through Kaz's assumptions based on his own expectations. Just left a distasteful taste in my mouth.

Despite the above, it was still an interesting read, and there were some details of the plot that were interesting to see how they turned out. It wasn't as suspenseful as Andy Weir' "The Martian" nor did it have as much humour, but insofar as it is a reasonably scientifically accurate story about space travel, if you enjoyed the one you may also enjoy the other.