A gray hat hacker. A dark-hearted crime boss.

Baltimore isn't big enough for both of them.

C.T. Ferguson uses his illicit digital skills as a private investigator. When a teenaged boy wants to find his missing older brother, C.T. takes the case.

He soon discovers the missing brother is a fellow keyboard wizard, which piques his interest. Then shadowy figures turn up wherever C.T. goes. He gets an offer he's not supposed to refuse from a budding gangster.

He declines it anyway, of course. But how is it all connected to the missing programmer?

When the investigation takes a turn for the worse, C.T. must contend with the police trying to arrest him and a cadre of enforcers trying to kill him. Can he follow the clues online and in the real world in time to reunite a family?

You'll love The Unknown Devil because it combines classic hard-boiled sensibilities and modern tech savvy in a compulsively readable package.

Tom Fowler was born and raised in Baltimore and still resides in Maryland. He is an unabashed homer for Baltimore sports teams. His full-time job is in the field of computer security.
Even from a young age, Tom wanted to write. He was about seven or eight, so the stories were brief and awful. Among them was a "murder mystery" in which young Tom, a polite lad, referred to everyone as "Mr. Patrick" or "Miss Jane." The most interesting thing about the alleged murder mystery was that no one died (and, in fact, everyone recovered quite nicely in the hospital). In the intervening years, Tom has gotten over this problem with killing characters in his stories.
When not working or writing, Tom enjoys spending time with his family and friends, reading, sports, movies, and writing brief bios in the third person.