Damascus Station Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Damascus Station | 2021 | Buy |
| Moscow X | 2023 | Buy |
| The Seventh Floor | 2024 | Buy |
| The Persian | 2025 | Buy |
David McCloskey spent six years as a CIA analyst focused on Syria, where he wrote for the President’s Daily Brief and briefed senior White House officials, ambassadors, and military leaders. He conducted field rotations through CIA stations across the Middle East during the Arab Spring and worked in the Counterterrorism Center covering Syria and Iraq. After leaving the agency, he worked at McKinsey & Company before turning to fiction.
His debut novel, Damascus Station, won praise for its authentic portrayal of CIA operations and was named Thriller of the Year by The Times. The book follows a CIA case officer dispatched to recruit a Syrian Palace official during the early days of the 2011 uprising. Later books in the series – Moscow X, The Seventh Floor, and The Persian – expand the scope to Russia, CIA headquarters at Langley, and the shadow war between Iran and Israel.
McCloskey co-hosts the podcast The Rest is Classified, where he discusses real-world intelligence and espionage. His background gives his fiction a level of procedural detail that readers and critics have noted sets his work apart from most spy thrillers on the market.