Hi, I'm Linda Holmes. The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you an

episode of NPR's Book of the Day podcast. It's NPR's daily podcast. If you're looking for a good

read or just want to keep up with the books, everyone is talking about. Here's our pal, Andrew Limbong.

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. You know those reading ruts where,

I don't know, it's hard to get into the mood. Sometimes my brain gets distracted when I'm reading

and like five pages in. I realize I haven't retained anything. This is where a good thriller actually

really comes in handy. You know, you put down that arduous biography of some dude or whatever

you've been trying to finish and pick up something heavy on like plot and murders and spies and

lying liars and that reading rut just washes away. If you're stuck, we've got you. Today we're going

to hear about two thrillers, one's a 2015 interview with Anthony Horowitz about writing a more modern

James Bond book. That's a follow up to the Bond classic Goldfinger. But first, former NPR host Lulugarsia

Navarro talks to Chris Hadfield. He was a national who just wrote a new thriller set an outer space

called the Apollo murders. It takes place in the 70s and he talks about bringing real world facts

into his narrative like the secret space station the Soviet had with a machine gun mounted to the top.

Spies and Spasits, fun stuff. Here's the interview.

ISS commander Chris Hadfield was orbiting the earth at thousands of miles an hour as he sang David

Bowie's space audit in 2015. This is crown control to major tongue. You really made the grave.

Unlike major Tom, he made it back to earth and began writing best-selling books about the final

frontier. His new novel is called the Apollo murders. It follows a fictional Apollo mission,

18, during the space race and the Cold War in the early 1970s. And he joins us now. Hello, Chris

Hadfield. Hello, Lulugarsia. How are you today? I am very well. So talk me through the plot a little

bit about what the ostensible mission of the spaceflight is but what the secret mission is because

...