The Hacker Chronicles Just west of Chicago’s Loop, a bronze marble monolith rises, housing a little known city agency that uses 10,000 connected surveillance cameras to watch everything and everyone in sight in an age of terrorism. Into this hidden world of cops, crime and computers, drops Aloysius Wachter, a hacker who becomes the improbable hero in this cyber-thriller. Nicknamed Vic, he’s a 25-year-old millennial, reared on video game tales of dungeons, dragons, heroes and damsels, whose real-life dream is to be a graphic novelist. But his divorced mom has other ideas. Tired of supplying an allowance to finance his fantasy, she forces him to take a job at the agency working on the night shift alongside his hard-drinking cousin, Danny. Vic soon discovers he’s part of a secret unit that fights crime in the midnight hours when not using the system’s considerable technical capabilities like frat boys to spot sexy, sometimes naked, women on and off the street. Computer savvy since middle-school, nightowl Vic warms to his involuntary servitude, realizing his job gives him access to the world’s biggest video game player. But the game turns serious within hours when he spots a beautiful woman with a dead body at her ankles. Intrigued by her resemblance to his ex-girlfriend, he pursues her outside of work as she becomes the chief suspect in the killing. The chase soon pits him against Israeli hit men, Chinese cyber-spies and eventually Russian hackers in a tale ripped from 21st Century headlines. Helping him find the beautiful woman are two long-time pals: Vassily, a Russian hacker on the run from his former gang, and Michelle, Vassily’s girlfriend, a Chinese hacker who used to work for the People’s Liberation Army. By the end of their who-diunnit adventure, Vic, Vassily and Michelle realize that they have become like a bizarro creation of Alexander McCall Smith, jokingly calling themselves the No. 1 Hackers Detective Agency as they prepare for their next caper.