Evil Spy School by Stuart Gibbs

 Ben didn't mean to blow up the principal's office, but on the first day of Fall semester, he manages to do just that. He is abruptly expelled and has to face going back to his old middle school.  He isn't there long before he is approached by a SPYDER agent who wants to recruit him to their own spy school. He doesn't want to become a criminal, but what if, somehow, the CIA arranged his expulsion just so he could go undercover and discover SPYDER's next evil plot? Does Ben have what it takes to become a double agent?

Stuart Gibbs is so clever.  I really have enjoyed everything of his that I have read.  The plots are intelligent and he has a really good balance between humor and adventure. Ben's two SPYDER school class mates are interesting and multi-dimensional characters. The reader, like Ben, doesn't know whether they are supposed to like them. It is also fun to see Ben on his own, without Erica there to back him up all the time. He flounders and struggles, not knowing what is going on, until suddenly he does. (2016, 352 p.)