{"id":11533,"date":"2025-08-11T06:41:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T10:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11533"},"modified":"2025-08-10T16:49:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T20:49:55","slug":"the-seventh-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11533","title":{"rendered":"The Seventh Floor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Third in former CIA analyst David McCloskey\u2019s riveting series of espionage thrillers, The Seventh Floor<\/em><\/a> will grab your attention and hang onto it until the last page. Not only is the story a hair-raising exploration of international misdeeds, its underlying theme is how loyalty to friends, family, and country is tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book\u2019s opening pages, two of the CIA\u2019s Russian sources are dead. One had a message vital for the CIA, which he was to convey to American CIA officer Sam Joseph. Now Sam\u2019s gone missing. The story\u2019s protagonist is Sam\u2019s boss and mentor Artemis Aphrodite Procter. Hard-nosed, hard-drinking, and profane, she heads the CIA unit Moscow X, a covert action program targeting Putin and his cronies,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her unusual name was carefully crafted: Artemis (huntress) Aphrodite (love) and Procter (so similar to Proctor, someone who oversees students). The best expression of her hunting and caring sides is the row of nine stars tattooed between her shoulder blades, each representing one of her agents whose murder she\u2019s avenged. (At CIA headquarters, in real life, a star is carved into a memorial wall<\/a> for each agency officer killed in the line of duty. There are 140 of these stars, and the officers\u2019 names are listed in an accompanying book. The names of 34 of them remain secret.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new CIA Director, Finn Gosford and his new staff occupy the agency\u2019s seventh floor. He and his number two, Deborah Sweet, know Artemis and her best mates\u2014Mac, Theo, and Gus\u2014from their earliest days of training. Artemis and her colleagues have pegged Finn and Debs as true second-raters, and Finn and Debs hate them for it. The agency\u2019s chief mole-hunter, named Petra, suspects this cluster of disasters may not be coincidental, but Finn and Debs refuse to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After several months of brutal interrogation and psychological torture, Sam Joseph is swapped for a Russian agent. He comes home to a very different organization. Petra and Artemis have been fired. And, in one of the most unexpected career turnarounds imaginable, she now works at a Florida alligator-themed amusement park. McCloskey is equally deft at conjuring a toxic workplace atmosphere, a dank underground cell in Moscow, and Artemis\u2019s unsavory alligator-related tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam visits Artemis in Florida and tells her what no one else knows. There is indeed a mole in CIA, but Sam\u2019s Russian contact was assassinated before he could give pass on the name. With meticulous attention to tradecraft, Sam and Artemis develop a plan to identify the traitor. Risky, yeah. Worse, too close to Artemis\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this action-packed story carries you along on a tidal wave of suspense, McCloskey makes his characters\u2019 actions and choices totally plausible. Like real people, they have flaws and heroism, they\u2019re capable of demonstrating loyalty and hiding betrayal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a really good one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Third in former CIA analyst David McCloskey\u2019s riveting series of espionage thrillers, The Seventh Floor will grab your attention and hang onto it until the last page. Not only is the story a hair-raising exploration of international misdeeds, its underlying … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1288,193,126,32],"tags":[628,2061,2290],"class_list":["post-11533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-espionage","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-cia","tag-david-mccloskey","tag-moscow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-301","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11535,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11533\/revisions\/11535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}