David McCloskey Books In Order

Publication Order of Damascus Station Books

David McCloskey is a thriller fiction novelist who is best known for his debut novel “Damascus Station.” Unlike most authors in the genre, McCloskey is a former CIA analyst who now writes novels and hence he has a lot of first-hand experience about what he is writing about.
While he was working for the Central Intelligence Agency, he regularly wrote for the President’s Daily Brief, briefed Arab royalty, senior White House officials, military officials, and ambassadors, and delivered classified testimony to various oversight committees in Congress.
Earlier, he worked at field stations for the CIA all over the Middle East during a very interesting period. He was also on rotation and working on jihad at the “Counterterrorism Center” focused mostly in Iraq and Syria.

The man has an Advanced master’s degree in Advanced International Studies from Johns Hopkins and also studied International Relations at Wheaton.

He currently makes his home in Texas where he lives with his wife and three kids.

As for how he started writing, there was no conscious decision on the part of David McCloskey. For the most part, it was just an organic process that involved nothing hard but just the organic put one foot in front of the other.
Upon leaving the CIA in 2014, he spent several months writing and trying to process his time when he worked in Syria during the country’s civil war. It was an experience that made him realize that he loved to write and that it provided him a way to see the world more clearly, and showed him how to be a better version of himself.

After reflecting on his work for several months, he was offered a job as a consultant with McKinsey and writing took a backseat for half a decade. Since he had been an analyst with the CIA for several years, McKinsey believed that he had the expertise to help with some of their pertinent data collecting.

Working at McKinsey turned out to be very involving and it was not until he took six months off work that he was able to finally get back to writing. Given his earlier experience with writing, he soon realized that he wanted to spend more time writing and decided to write a book.

While working for McKinsey was grueling, it provided him with some great insights on how to organize his thoughts. While he had all the information from the characters the plot and the people who would help him fill out the gaps, he soon realized that writing was not as linear as most people believed it was.

Like many people, he once believed that fiction writing was an unconstrained, experimental, and wild thing. Working at McKinsey made McCloskey realize that he needed to have a process for his fiction writing.
While some elements can be unstructured, he realized that stories and books have deep structure to them from his experience gathering information at the firm. His work there also helped him think in a very rigorous way about what he had to do to go from idea or concept to publication.

He published ‘Damascus Station” his debut novel in 2021.

David McCloskey’s novel “Damascus Station” introduces Sam Joseph, a CIA officer sent to Paris where he is to recruit Mariam Hadad a Syrian Palace official. The two soon get into a forbidden relationship, which creates all manner of danger and supercharges his target’s recruitment.

They ultimately head to Damascus hoping to find the man they believe was instrumental in the disappearance of an American intelligence officer. However, the chase for a killer soon has them stumble upon a dark secret of the Syrian regime and several high-profile assassinations.
They soon find themselves under the radar of Ali Hassan who is the best spy catcher Assad has in addition to Rustum his brother, who heads the much-feared “Republican Guard.”

The work is set against the background of Syria, which is pulsing with rebellion and fear, as it provides a textured portrayal of betrayal, espionage, loyalty, and love, as Sam takes on one of the most difficult assignments for the CIA.
The work comes with a wide cast of developed and believable characters as the author provides a glimpse into the workings of a CIA station in the Middle East. It also provides insights into the sociopathic and neurotic Assad regime.

“Moscow X” by David McCloskey is another interesting addition to the “Damascus Station” series of novels.

What had been a daring operation in Russia now threatens to cause chaos in the Kremlin but Langley is not so sure that it can trust the Russian who they were working with.

Max and Sia are CIA officers who go into the country as businessmen and hoping to recruit Vladimir Putin’s moneyman. Sai is employed by a law firm in London which works to conceal the wealth of the very elite in the world. Max runs a family business breeding racehorses in Mexico, which has been a CIA front for decades.

They pretend to be a couple so that they can go after Putin’s private banker Vadim and Anna his wife who they never knew was an intelligence officer for Russia working undercover at the bank.
Descending even deeper into the Russian world rife with violence but dripping with luxury, their only hope is Anna who unbeknownst to them is playing another game.

From the opulence of Russia, the corridors of Langley, and northern Mexican horse ranches, it is a compelling thriller with unsparing and raw commentary on the shadow war between Russia and the United States.

David McCloskey’s novel “The Seventh Floor” is a gripping work of fiction that opens with a Russian arriving in Singapore hoping to sell a secret. When the man is killed, Sam Joseph the intelligence officer who was to meet him also disappears, even as Artemis Procter is run out of the CIA, as he is made the scapegoat.

Following a spy swap, Sam comes back with an explosive when he appears at the home of Procter and it is soon clear that within the upper reaches of the CIA is a Russian mole. As Sam and Procter investigate, they come up with a shortlist of suspects who include Procter’s fiercest enemies and closest friends.

It is not long before Procter is required to dig up her dark past while working for the CIA and this places both her and Sam in danger as the Russian mole in Langley is under the protection of a savvy Russian spymaster.
Bouncing between the Kremlin and the halls of Langley, this work explores the nature of friendship while working in intelligence which tends to be so faithless.