David McCloskey, a former CIA officer, whose thriller Damascus Station, one of the best spy thrillers in years, this time “ The Seventh Floor” has become addictively suspenseful and espionage thriller. A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. But when the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat and run out of the service. Traded back in a spy swap, Sam appears at Procter’s central Florida doorstep months later with an explosive secret, there is a Russian mole hidden deep within the upper reaches of CIA, in the offices on the Seventh Floor.

As Artemis Proctor and Sam Investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter’s closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt soon requires Proctor to dredge up her own chequered past in service of CIA, placing her and Sam into the sights of a savvy Russian spymaster who will protect Moscow’s mole in Langley at all costs, even if means wreaking bloody havoc across the United States.

With the modern communication systems that were once the province of governments and intelligence services are freely available. Messaging services are encrypted end-to-end. Virtual private networks allow internet users to mask their connection point and pretend to be in another country. Search engines and social media definitely allows us to track any one of interest.

Proctor notes, in the good old days, she would have needed five years of CIA tech specialists  nerd time and millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Now all she needed was Best Buy, a neighbourhood electronic store. Proctor who is on mole hunt, and because of the mole may be why Proctor has been humiliated and brutally dismissed from the agency, despite her years of loyal service, commendations and awards. Sam Joseph is on an operation in Singapore that goes wrong, and is renditioned to Moscow to be imprisoned and tortured. Eventually he is traded for a Russian. Once back home, he teams up with Proctor to track down the mole. Joseph still works for the agency, so can access intelligence and classified documents. David McCloskey  gives a highly detailed account of how to set up an ad hoc spy  operation, and the inner workings of CIA headquarters, and crafts Proctor into one of the most compelling protagonists in modern spy fiction.

Russian spymasters launch deadly manoeuvres to protect their asset. But beyond the thrills and tradecraft details, McCloskey questions friendship, love and loyalty. There is plenty of twists in the spy thriller that is intensely riveting.

The Seventh Floor by David McCloskey, Swift £20/ WW Norton $29.99.