The Seventh Floor

A Novel

By: David McCloskey

Narrated by: Sharon Freedman

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?

©2024 David McCloskey (P)2024 Tantor

Not a fan of narrator

Read many of this authors books. First time listening to author books though. Narrator very monotone except when reading dialogue. My mind wandered because of it. Won’t listen to this author again. Took away from my enjoyment of the book.

Entertaining, but comically bad at times

Let me begin this by stating that I enjoyed the first two books, and if he had decided to stick to his “unrealistic” but entertaining motif I might have liked this too. The dialogue is comically bad for a good portion of this book, and while I’m sure the author has his reasons, the kindergarten description of a counterespionage investigation is embarrassing. Also, while I’m sure the author was trying to do an homage to Le Carre with one of his major plot points, it came off more like a thrift store attempt at copying Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
On the vocal performance, this was not the right person for this. Part of her problem was just some of the basic terminology was mispronounced, saying N.O.C, instead of “knock”. While she also had some bad dialogue to deal with, her whole inflection and performance was just not right for this book.
Overall, it is certainly entertaining, but a swing and a miss third effort for this author.

A story about character and perseverance

This novel challenges the cliche that the truth is stranger than fiction. At the very least, it might match some of the non fiction accounts from the first cold war. I enjoyed the characters and the details in this story in a way that the listener might remember if they had ever been to the places written about in this story. Any scratches on this memory that might dull the story are forgiven. It was a great story and the narration was excellent.

This was pretty awesome

This book was pretty awesome. It's in the spirit of a modern day Tinker Tailor. I hate when they change up narrators but the annoyance went away after a few chapters. I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Suspenseful and captureing

Loved the story weaving through the world with intensity and realism. Couldn’t stop reading it. Especially Vienna as the spy capital captured a scene…