The Inside Job, middle school spy fun with action and heart

The Inside Job-And Other Skills I Learned as A Superspy starts out of the gate with the team on a mission. We’re immediately introduced to a team of superspies who are all kids ranging in age from 11 to their late teens. Hale serves as the book’s central character. He’s a young kid who, along with his sister and other friends is ex-SRS agents who were intent committing crimes all over the world.

That’s an accurate overview of the book but it’s also a lot to take in at once.  What is SRS and how am I supposed to keep track of six strong protagonists, a couple antagonists and a shadowy organization that may or may not include Hale’s mom-who he thought was dead?

For just a moment I was unsure where the book was going. I thought that there would be too many moving parts in order for the book to be entertaining for me; much less the middle school audience that it’s intended for.

Settle down Sparky, I told myself. This is the second book in authors Jackson Pearce series And Other Skills I Learned as a Superspy. If you read the first book, The Double Cross, then you’ll immediately know the personalities of the characters and welcome them back. If you’re jumping into the series with The Inside Job don’t worry, the water’s fine, c’mon in.

The Inside Job is a very fun book that really succeeds in establishing a lost-boys type world that exists within ours that is just believable enough. SRS is a spy organization that the kids used to work for that did some bad things. Hale, his sister Kennedy, best friend Walter, Beatix and Ben Clatterbuck-the twins, Uncle Stan and Agent Otter escaped that organization. Now they conduct their own espionage, this time for the sake of good. Think of them like a middle age accessible James Bond team, with just a splash of Goonies and Oceans 11 thrown in for good measure.

One thing that makes this an enjoyable book to read is that it shakes up the locations and character interactions frequently and with variety. We get that Hale and Walter are best friends, but they mix it up with the other characters with such ease and grace that it makes all of them relatable to some degree to any middle school reader.

The group has a plan to dismantle SRS for good, but it requires them to travel all over Europe conducting one seemingly impossible mission after the other. See, it is like a kid friendly James Bond book?

One aspect of Pearce’s writing that will assist readers is that she uses headers twice in the book when the team’s mission is even more impossible. They act as a nice pause and fast forward to let readers grasp the complicated, difficult task in front of them.  What young readers (and parents) will appreciate is that this is a book that they’ll want to read. Each chapter is around nine pages long and there are no pictures in the book. If you’re looking for a big kid chapter book to move up from Wimpy Kid from check this out.

Bonus: Jackson Pearce will be at the Decatur Book Festival, September 2-4 in Decatur, Georgia. This is a great book festival and the entire line up of children’s authors is out of this world.