Closed Hatch - Bradley Hall

Seven people. One dead scientist. A closed hatch. And a killer who knows how to make the space station kill for him.

A man is dead aboard the International Space Station.

The hatch is closed. The station is functioning normally. And everyone aboard has a reason to believe it was an accident.

Dr. Lekha Menon, the station’s Chief Medical Officer, is not convinced.

Alan Crowe, a NASA guest researcher, has died inside a sealed orbital laboratory with no obvious trauma and no easy explanation. As NASA begins treating the death as a procedural mishap, Lekha starts examining the evidence the official story leaves behind: the medical findings, environmental systems, equipment logs, access records, and tiny inconsistencies that should mean nothing, but don’t.

Because someone may have discovered how to turn the station itself into a weapon.

With Earth hundreds of miles below and a return vehicle still weeks away, Lekha cannot simply hand the investigation to police or wait for a forensic team to arrive. The murderer is somewhere aboard the station, and the same systems that keep the crew alive may be capable of killing again.

As pressure from the ground collides with the demands of truth, Lekha must determine how Alan Crowe died, who wanted him dead, and whether the first murder was only the beginning.

Closed Hatch is a locked-room murder mystery set aboard the International Space Station, blending science fiction, medical investigation, technological thriller, and classic whodunit into a story where the crime scene is also the life-support system, and the killer is trapped inside it with everyone else.