by James Ponti (Author), Lisa Flanagan (Narrator), Simon & Schuster Audio (Publisher)

An audiobook.

LONDON CALLING, the sixth City Spies adventure by James Ponti, is another amazing story about the young Special MI-6 spies whom the Second-in-Command of British espionage, calls “those magnificent children.”

Each of these kids, aged from 9 to 14, was once orphaned and then found in the cities around the world for which they were afterward named: (Paris, Rio, Sydney, Brooklyn, Kat (Katmandu), and Cairo.)  They’ve learned to work together, each with their own specialties, and they’ve accomplished some mighty amazing feats of spy craft and solution.

There is a background story arc about their leader, weirdly called “Mother” even though he is a married dad.  Before the series began, his wife was wooed (or so he believes) by an evil spying organization who wanted to use her, taking his two natural kids with her. His quest, besides the situations facing MI-6 in each book, is always to find his two children. (He’s already adopted the City Spy kids.)

In LONDON CALLING, the young specialists have a rescue to accomplish, a royal wedding to save, and a huge computer breach to deal with. They do it all quite well, mostly.  But their cover is blown, and their living/workplace, is destroyed, so they have to relocate.

But it seems… as this is number six and a lot of the loose strings are tied, it may be the end of this series.  Each character is officially MI-6 classified at the conclusion, speculating on what their futures might be. 

It’s been a great run.  I highly recommend the series for fun, suspense, interesting topics, and world-city hopping.  The kids are really smart and work together well on missions, but they deal with everyday kids’ problems as well; angst, jealousy, hurt feelings, lack of confidence, and the need for belonging. 

James Ponti really has talent writing for KIDS.