The Time of the Seventh Angel — David Gurr
The Time of the Seventh Angel
by David Gurr
A prophetic thriller spanning global conflict, secret power, and the fragile edge between hope and annihilation.
Available now in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.
“A propulsive, intelligent astonishment.”
“Gurr pens this all with brisk, page-turning power, but the pacing never comes at the expense of character interiority or thematic richness.”
“The Time of the Seventh Angel dazzles and provokes.”
Takeaway — “Smart end-times thriller of late-20th-century America facing nukes and a messiah.”
— BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly
“An utterly riveting read to the final page... terrifying, precognizant.”
“Fiction with the pressure of a warning siren.”
“Reading a final novel by a 90-year-old literary master who has spent decades watching his predictions come true is its own kind of extraordinary experience.”
About the Book
Forty-five years ago, CWA Silver Dagger finalist David Gurr began writing a geopolitical thriller. He set it aside, only to realize decades later that modern politics had finally caught up to his pages.
Long before a real-world KGB operative rose to rule Russia, Gurr predicted it—down to the chilling, ruthless ambition of a tyrant named Komradyn. Now, The Time of the Seventh Angel stands as a terrifyingly prescient masterpiece of nuclear brinkmanship.
It begins with a Cold War disturbance no intelligence system can explain. An impossible stranger materializes in Ukraine, causing the Kremlin’s secret police to fall to their knees. Days later, an impregnable U.S. nuclear command bunker is flawlessly breached. Washington and Moscow face a shadow adversary they can neither define nor contain.
As the superpowers scramble, the geopolitical chessboard fractures. In Russia, the ruthless KGB operative Komradyn seizes the chaos to launch a play for absolute power. In the Middle East, a nuclear warhead vanishes. With the world on a hair-trigger, a U.S. Intelligence official discovers a terrifying connection: the Intruder is using the Book of Revelation as a high-level cryptographic code to systematically dismantle global security.
The language of modern warfare is forced to battle divine prophecy. The seventh angel has sounded. The countdown has begun.
Acclaim for the previous works of DAVID GURR
David Gurr’s political thrillers have been ranked with those of John Le Carré, Len Deighton and Graham Greene. His literary works have been called a tour de force. His writing refuses to be pigeon-holed.
“Gurr’s novels truly deserve the care and patience they ask of the reader.”
“Wildly audacious. It may put readers in mind of Thomas Pynchon … Original, entertaining, brilliantly inventive.”
Author’s Note at the Age of 90
My dear Readers: I started this prophetic fiction when Mikhail Gorbachev was not in power; the Berlin Wall still stood; the Cold War seemed to have no end; and the scourge called AIDS was doubly terrifying, with extreme prejudice directed to its victims, and no cure. Ronald Reagan saw a new dawning for America, but a large chunk of New York real estate was a burning ruin. In Ukraine, the Soviet KGB were conducting a pogrom against dissidents and intellectuals trying to speak out against domination from the Kremlin. My previous thrillers had been well received: my writer’s life was flourishing. Then, personal circumstances changed abruptly. I set this manuscript aside.
That was half my lifetime ago.
These forty five years later find the democratic world, and Ukraine, only just emerged from the black bat apocalypse called Covid, and still facing the Kremlin opponent whose coming — and even his name — my yellowed manuscript predicted. And America is still trying to solve the impossible problem posed by the ideals of its founding Constitution: Equality for all, versus Absolute Monarchy.
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Sword of Damocles above us all rests on an even more slender trigger: the Doomsday Clock of the Atomic Scientists has just been reset at 84 seconds to midnight: an Artificially Intelligent world that finds us—and America’s dream of itself—somewhere between Dr. Strangelove and Paradise Lost.
This book, with its foreboding Prophecies of the Angels, sets out the signposts on the route to 9/11 — and beyond it, humanity’s all too current choice between Armageddon or Redemption.
We are indeed in The Time of the Seventh Angel.
About the Author
David Gurr was born in London, 1936, and emigrated from Britain to Canada with his parents at Christmas, 1947. He enrolled as a cadet in the Royal Canadian Naval College, HMCS Venture, in 1954, and later obtained a degree in Mathematics, Physics, and Political Science from the University of Victoria.
After driving destroyers and analyzing computers for the Navy, he resigned his commission in 1971 to launch a career designing and building unique West Coast houses. He began writing fiction and published his first novel, Troika, in 1979.
The Time of the Seventh Angel is the ninth book published under his own name.
He currently lives with his wife, Diane Tolomeo, in a house and garden suitably modified to enjoy the climate, fauna and flora of Victoria, British Columbia. In any odd moments remaining he dances the Argentine Tango.
The Story Behind the Story
David Gurr on the years and events that led to this novel.
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We are indeed in The Time of the Seventh Angel.