Book #2 in the Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls series takes off a year after the first book. Abby is now in her second year at The Smith School for Children, a private boarding school. It is also a “training facility for the Center, a government organization that uses kids to ferret out information no one else has any hope of acquiring. The theory is that kids are invisible…and therefore make really good spies.”(8) A few things have changed. The first and foremost for Abby being the interim Headmaster is her own mother. A new Headmaster means changes will be made. One change is the rule dealing with no playing of the video game Monster Mayhem. (Monster Mayhem is very much like Pokemon Go.) So, of course, Abby is playing it on the sly.

At this day’s Morning Meeting, the guest speaker in Toby’s father -Drexel Cain, the inventor of Monster Mayhem. At the end of the meeting, a smokey explosion has the entire school evacuating the auditorium. A short time later, Toby is sent a ransom note, via text message, for his father. Toby must play and win the latest version of Monster Mayhem, which has not been made available to the public yet, to get his father back. As always, Toby is not to tell anyone about the kidnapping. And as always, people, especially Abby, find out and try to help.

Off the reader goes to see if the kidnapper will be caught by extremely smart, extremely rich, extremely well-connected middle-school students who are secretly training to be spies while figuring out clues to the video game Monster Mayhem which takes them around the world. Yes, they are scared at times, but Abby’s mother used to say,”that being afraid was good because fear let you know when you should be alert and aware. She said it was the body’s way of turning on all the lights and getting ready.” (249)

So get ready readers, the Power Play is is about to begin!

Typo on page 198, paragraph 9, “It” should be ‘If’.