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Dubray Review

Thad Roberts was a high achiever working as an intern at NASA on his way to becoming an astronaut.  When he met the girl of his dreams, he promised to give her the moon and – unlike most hopeless romantics – he intended to keep that promise.  Thad, his girlfriend and a third intern concocted a plan to break into NASA to steal something so valuable that it’s illegal to own it: lunar samples from every moon walk in history. While on the run, they hid the samples under a mattress on a cheap motel bed; hence ‘sex on the moon’. This book tells the story of the plan, the heist and the sting that brought them down.  A fast-paced page-turner told with a lot of heart, it’s an audacious true story that reads like a novel and is sure to be made into a film.

- Donal Harding, Dun Laoghaire

Description

Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA programme had an idea - a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally. Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impenetrable laboratory at NASA's headquarters - past security checkpoints, and electronically locked door with cipher security codes and camera-lined hallways - and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: Apollo moon rocks from every moon landing in history. Was Thad Roberts - undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable - really what he seemed? And what does one do with an item so valuable that it's illegal even to own? Based on meticulous research into thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts and documents, and scores of interviews with the people involved, Mezrich - with his signature high-velocity swagger - has reconstructed the madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity all centred on a heist that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride.

Reviews

"The story that follows is everything you'd expect from Mezrich. Written almost entirely from Roberts' point of view, it delivers clever people doing clever things, betrayals and ingenious schemes and the sort of narrative arc that urges you to consume it all in one sitting...it is grippingly written..." The Times "An intriguing tale" Mail on Sunday