Chris Hadfield (courtesy ChrisHadfield.ca)

Astronaut and author Chris Hadfield is making his first foray into fiction.

The bestselling author announced this week that his thriller, The Apollo Murders, is slated for publication by Penguin Random House Canada on Oct. 12.

The Apollo Murders is set in 1973 on the far side of the moon, and tells the story of three astronauts – one of whom may have nefarious intentions – trapped in an Apollo module. As two teams of astronauts, one American and one Soviet, race to find a secret bounty, a Houston flight controller has to do everything he can to keep the NASA team together and ahead of their rivals.

In a video posted to his website, Hadfield describes the book as “an intertwining of the space race and the Cold War and the Soviet space station all put together,” and says readers can expect “all sorts of twists and turns.”

This will be Hadfield’s first novel. His previous books include the memoir An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth and picture book The Darkest Dark.