The Seventh Floor: A Novel

by David McCloskey

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

In a job this unforgiving, friendship can't last. Six secret agents have survived the unspeakable together, as both friends and enemies, and now their next targets will be their toughest yet — each other.

Six CIA officers. Dear friends and cherished enemies. For a quarter century they have stolen other people’s secrets. Now they must steal each other’s.

A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, operational chief Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat for the disaster and run out of the service. Months later, Sam appears at Procter’s doorstep with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole burrowed deep within the highest ranks of the CIA.

As Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter’s closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt requires Procter to dredge up her checkered past in the service of the CIA, placing the pair in the sights of a savvy Russian spymaster who will protect Moscow’s mole in Langley at all costs. What happens when friendships forged by sweat and blood—from the Farm to Afghanistan and the executive “Seventh Floor” of CIA’s Langley headquarters—are put to the ultimate test? What can we truly know about the people we love the most?

Taking readers from Langley to Moscow to Paris and beyond, The Seventh Floor explores the nature of friendship in a faithless business, and what it means to love a place that does not love you back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324086680
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

David McCloskey is the author of the novels Damascus Station, Moscow X, and The Seventh Floor, and is cohost of the podcast The Rest Is Classified. A former CIA analyst, he worked at Langley and in field stations across the Middle East. He lives in Texas.

Editorial Reviews

"David McCloskey has an uncanny knack for blending humor, intrigue, and authenticity into an espionage whodunit, replete with brilliant tradecraft and twists. Absolutely everything you could want in a spy novel."

I.S. Berry

"David McCloskey has written a colorful, and fantastically clever twenty-first-century version of the classic double agent conundrum, capturing the painful questions of trust and betrayal among lifelong friends."

Anna Pitoniak

"A rare combination of experience and talent."

Mick Herron

"[A] gripping, fast-paced plot that includes realistic, cutting-edge tradecraft and action. The Seventh Floor ... will cement McCloskey’s reputation as the best contemporary spy novelist."

General David Petraeus

"The Seventh Floor is a John le Carré-level game of cat and mouse. It could have only been written by someone like David McCloskey, who has an insider’s sharp angle. Read this terrific novel and watch this writer."

David Baldacci

"The Seventh Floor is a John le Carré-level game of cat and mouse. It could have only been written by someone like David McCloskey, who has an insider’s sharp angle. Read this terrific novel and watch this writer."— David Baldacci

"[A] terrific espionage series…. [McCloskey] brings an impressive knowledge of spycraft to the proceedings."— Sarah Lyall New York Times Book Review

"A rare combination of experience and talent."— Mick Herron, author of The Secret Hours and the Slough House series

"[A] fantastically clever twenty-first-century version of the classic double agent conundrum, capturing the painful questions of trust and betrayal among lifelong friends."— Anna Pitoniak, author of The Helsinki Affair

"David McCloskey has an uncanny knack for blending humor, intrigue, and authenticity into an espionage whodunit, replete with brilliant tradecraft and twists. Absolutely everything you could want in a spy novel."— I.S. Berry, Edgar Award–winning author of The Peacock and the Sparrow

"[A] gripping, fast-paced plot that includes realistic, cutting-edge tradecraft and action. The Seventh Floor ... will cement McCloskey’s reputation as the best contemporary spy novelist."— General David Petraeus, US Army (Ret.), former Commander of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and Coalition Forces in Afghanistan, and former Director of the CIA

"The strength of The Seventh Floor, by former CIA analyst David McCloskey, is how the author brings the unique CIA culture to life…it describes and illuminates the CIA culture in a way that could only be depicted by a true insider…. McCloskey has written a highly entertaining and engrossing book that will surely satisfy the palate of those looking for a vicarious fictitious escape into the exciting and unpredictable world of espionage."— Joseph Augustyn The Cipher Brief

"McCloskey, a former CIA analyst, layers the novel with the inside details of tradecraft that only a writer of his background could provide."— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher