Written in 2012 by Rebecca Stead, Liar & Spy features a seventh-grade protagonist who must confront bullying at school and many changes in his home life. Liar & Spy is Stead’s third novel; after her debut novel, First Light, she earned considerable acclaim for her award-winning second novel, When You Reach Me. Similarly, Liar & Spy was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2014 and was named one of School Library’s “Best Books of 2012.” Although Stead’s first two novels are firmly rooted in the genres of science fiction and mystery, Liar & Spy is considered to be a more realistic work of fiction. In an interview with Horn Books, Stead described the novel as “a fairly quiet, sensitive [book] about sensitive kids” (Sutton, Roger. “Rebecca Stead Talks With Roger.” The Horn Book). The novel has been praised for its realistic depiction of bullying, for rather than focusing on a single traumatic incident of physical or social violence, it instead examines the cumulative effects of minor taunting and physical incidents that escape the notice of most adults.

This guide uses the Yearling Books 2013 Kindle edition of the book.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of bullying in a middle school setting, including offensive name-calling and minor physical contact.

Plot Summary

Georges is a seventh-grade student who lives in Brooklyn with his mother and father. Recently, Georges’s father was fired from his job as an architect. Although Georges’s father has since started his own business (helping homeowners to add an “aged” look to newly constructed buildings), the family is still having financial challenges and must sell their own home and move to an apartment 12 blocks away. One day, as Georges and his father take their packing materials to the basement of the apartment building, they see a sign that reads “Spy Club Meeting—TODAY!” (13). Georges later attends the spy club meeting and meets Candy and Safer, a brother and sister who live on the sixth floor. Safer explains that they are investigating the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment above Georges’s and often behaves suspiciously. Georges and Safer strike up a fast friendship as Safer trains Georges in spy skills like observation and memory.

Meanwhile, Georges continues to attend the same school, where his science class is about to begin the “Science Unit of Destiny.” The unit is about the human tongue and tastebuds and culminates in a taste test that (according to student legend) will reveal either the students’ true love or their destiny to die young. Most of the seventh grade is very much looking forward to the experiment. Overall, Georges is a quiet, reserved kid who often experiences bullying. In gym class, Georges’s primary bully, Dallas, steps on his stomach because he’s annoyed that Georges’s bad serve cost their team the victory in a volleyball game. Georges lifts Dallas’ foot off his stomach, causing Dallas to fall over. Though Georges doesn’t realize it at the time, some of the other kids see the interaction, which leaves Dallas humiliated enough to seek revenge. Dallas intensifies his bullying behavior as time goes on, and Georges copes by compartmentalizing and detaching from it. He compares this daily unpleasantness to the dots in a pointillist painting, saying that life is about the big picture and that people shouldn’t focus on “the dots” that represent the small incidents in daily life.

The adjustment to the new apartment is made harder for Georges by his mother’s constant absence. Georges’s mother is a nurse who often works long shifts at the hospital, increasingly so since his father was fired, and the family needs the money. Georges often watches videotapes of America’s Funniest Home Videos that his mother recorded for him, hoping that this activity will cheer him up. He also leaves his mother messages written in Scrabble tiles before he goes to bed in the morning; he wakes to find the tiles rearranged in her responses. Georges’s father often goes to the hospital to visit her, but Georges does not join him. Safer and Georges also continue to investigate Mr. X, with Safer embroiling them in increasingly risky activities: keeping track of Mr. X’s movements by tucking a folded gum wrapper into his door frame, searching his laundry in the dryer, stealing a key from one of Mr. X’s pockets, and planning to break into his apartment to find what the key might open. Georges is a cautious kid who doesn’t like to take risks or break rules, but his loyalty to Safer keeps pushing him out of his comfort zone as he tries to provide spy backup.

At school, the Science Unit of Destiny advances, and Dallas’s harassment campaign against Georges intensifies. Georges also begins to befriend another kid in his class named Bob English. Dallas and his friend Carter taunt Georges, calling him “Gorgeous,” a derogatory nickname based on the unusual spelling of his name. In gym class one day, the gym teacher makes Georges the captain of the Blue Team for a game of Capture the Flag, and Georges subverts the way teams are usually chosen by deliberately picking all of the kids who are usually chosen last. The Blue Team fills with the misfits and outcasts who come together and play the game in a way they enjoy—by hiding their flag so well that the other team can’t find it and ignoring the other team’s flag entirely in favor of launching exciting jailbreaks for their captured teammates. The game officially ends in a tie, with no one winning or losing.

At the apartment building, Georges and Safer’s investigation of Mr. X escalates. Georges stands lookout by monitoring the lobby camera while Safer goes upstairs and enters Mr. X’s apartment to search. They stay on the phone so that Georges can warn Safer if the man comes home. Though Georges has never seen Mr. X himself, he recognizes the man wearing all black from Safer’s description. When the man enters the building’s lobby, Georges tries to get Safer’s attention on the phone line, but Safer cannot hear him. Georges runs out and catches the elevator with Mr. X in an effort to stall the man. He runs back downstairs and receives a call from Safer, who falsely claims to be standing by Mr. X’s front door, ready to leave on Georges’s word. Hurt and angry when he realizes that Safer was never in Mr. X’s apartment, Georges sneaks upstairs and confronts his friend, who is unrepentant. Georges storms out.

Georges finally tells his father about the things he’s been going through. His father encourages him to forgive Safer and see the game from his perspective. His father also tells Georges that Dallas’s daily bullying does matter and insists on going to the school to make sure the bullying stops. Georges almost agrees but then has another idea—he rallies the Blue Team, starting with Bob English, and they all agree to pretend not to be able to taste the chemical during the upcoming taste test in science class. There is safety in numbers, and if all of them are believed to be non-tasters, then Dallas won’t be able to single Georges out for harassment. The plan works; Dallas is left without ammunition against Georges.

When Georges gets home from school that day, Safer reveals that he got his nickname because he has always been afraid of everything. He doesn’t even leave the apartment building, which is why he’s not enrolled in school. Georges goes inside alone, but Safer comes in through the fire escape and tells Georges that he thought the spy games were always meant to be “pretend.” When Safer asks Georges if he’s afraid of anything, Georges’s inner thoughts reveal that his mother has not been working at the hospital late; instead, she is a patient there. Two weeks prior, she collapsed and was discovered to have a serious infection. Georges is so afraid of losing her that he hasn’t acknowledged the situation to himself. Now, he finally goes to visit his mother in the hospital. When he gets home, he calls Safer down to his apartment so that they can make a list of things that Safer isn’t afraid of. In the end, the Blue Team stays united and takes comfort in their new sense of community. Safer, with Georges’s help, starts to venture out of the apartment building. His newfound confidence allows his younger sister, Candy, to start the fourth grade—albeit with only three weeks of school left. Safer and Georges take walks together, ranging farther and farther from the building, and Georges’s mother recovers and comes home from the hospital.