London Calling (City Spies) Hardcover – February 4, 2025

My daughter and I have read every single City Spies book together at bedtime, along with the full Framed! series, and London Calling might be one of our favorites so far. Ponti has such a reliable formula: smart plots, great pacing, and characters you actually care about. But even better, he keeps finding new ways to raise the stakes without losing the fun.This one has a few twists we didn’t see coming, and the way he weaves real-world history and geography into the storyline made for some great post-chapter conversations. The whole City Spies team continues to grow in meaningful ways — it’s not just about cool missions, it’s about loyalty, trust, and finding your place in the world (plus a few high-tech gadgets and close calls, of course).If you’re already a fan of the series, London Calling won’t disappoint. And if you’re just jumping in now… honestly, go back to the first one and start from there. It’s worth the ride.

It's a fun book very quick everything that goes on.It's clean, perfect for kids.My kids from ages 10 till 17 love this books (so do I)My kids would finish this book within a few hours it's that good they would not put it down.We have every one of his books.

My daughter loves this book series! Usually we get books from the library, but wanted this right when it came out. She loves the action/ adventure and the backstory of the characters

My 13 year old lives this series! He's read all the books, some of them more than once. While it is too advanced for my 6 year old to read by himself, he also enjoys this series very much. My older child reads to him every night.

Great book! Finished it in one day!! Couldn’t put it down

Great book. My daughter loves it.

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.

Good story for young readers. No bad language. The right amount of danger, and the author has a wonderful way of giving historical and geographical factoids without stopping the momentum of the story. That said, this is far from my favorite in this usually delightful series. The young spies are still engaging, but Clemmie, an adult parent of Cairo (all the kids have city code names) has always been an unlikable character. Mr. Ponti tries to make the reader care about her, but for this reader (adult), he failed miserably. And in doing so, put a damper on the novel. But if he writes No. 7 in the series, I'll buy it.