The Apollo Deception

This intriguing thriller from Silver (The Bookworm) takes the premise that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing never happened. Instead, it was a fake perpetrated with the help of, among others, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, Walt Disney, and Charlie Stephens, the filmmaker father of the book’s protagonist, Gary Stephens. When, in 2019, the Chinese government announces plans to plant its flag on the moon alongside the American one, chaos breaks out among the surviving conspirators: how could they explain the fact that there’s no flag on the moon? Eighty-one-year-old Charlie is murdered hours after the announcement, and Gary, a director of TV commercials, and his sister, Pippa, inherit their father’s worldly goods, which include seven large 35mm film cans hidden in a locker at Manhattan’s 79th Street Boat Basin. Without further ado, Gary is pulled into a world of spies and counterspies, murky politicians, greedy businessmen, and trained assassins. Silver keeps up a breakneck pace, dexterously swerving from one potential calamity to the next just as the logic begins to wobble. Fans of alternate history and conspiracy theories will have fun. [em]Agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (Feb.) [/em]