I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter. The conclusion of the book is very action movie-ish and also has a certain Tom Clancy vibe to it. and Soviet Union, both of whom want something on the moon. The plot itself is a push and pull between the U.S. At other times, the omniscient technical view can get in the way of some scenes’ pacing. This scene worked so well because the reader knew the pilot was going to die before the pilot did, and watching it unfold was like watching an accident you were powerless to stop. I felt a pit in my stomach as the logical and deadly sequence of events unfolded, the prose following the pilot’s desperate attempts during the subsequent spin and crash. A harrowing helicopter crash details the fatal consequences of a pilot's simple movement on a flight stick pulling a critical linkage loose. When an astronaut flips a switch, we'll know exactly the sequence of events that follows. When you read a Clancy story, a fighter pilot doesn't just fire a missile instead, the prose zooms in on the connection of the fire button sending its signal traveling down through wires, igniting the missile's rocket motor, clamps releasing, and radar guidance engaging. It's not, say, Moonraker’s level of space mayhem, but there are small struggles peppered throughout the story’s second half. Spacewalkers trying to fight their way onto each other's ships. Armed space stations and pistols squirreled away in spacesuits. Are there murders? Indeed, there is quite a body count by the story's end, although most deaths are from combat. Chris Hadfield does an excellent job of crafting a small, focused cast of astronauts, controllers, and Russian agents, placing them in claustrophobic situations where everyone has reason to distrust each other. The Apollo 18 mission is more of a military adventure, with plenty of U.S./Soviet Union Cold War conflict fueling its plot. The Apollo Murders delivers exactly that, following a group of astronauts and mission planners on a fictional Apollo 18 Moon voyage (in real life, Apollo 17 was the final mission). Would the story deliver this implicit promise? I wanted to know what it was like to feel the gees and the kick of stage separation, or the clumsy low-gravity bounce of a first moon step. What to expect from a commander of the International Space Station who writes 70s era NASA fiction? I hoped, as I stared at the cover, that I would get scenes where I was the astronaut reclined in my capsule seat, a massive Saturn V rock underneath me, with the Mission Control countdown ticking in my headset. Others know their author's expertise and want stories filled with technical marvels and accuracy.

Some see glitzy covers with spaceships and conjure up exciting battles.

Every reader brings a certain expectation to what he hopes a book contains.

Chris hadfield the apollo murders