Banana Girls is a team of spies working for Stacia.
That is a first name of the female boss of the Girls, not an organization name. Stacia's last name is Keller. What the organization that Ms. Keller works for is named is, well, unknown. Since the Girls are not officially or technically "a part of any particular government agency - they were more like independent contractors", I mark the team as working for Stacia.
For the record, Keller is a very intelligent, diligent, and efficient director of the Girls who was for a couple of decades a dangerous field agent herself and who has a good number of other people working for her and who is obviously very well funded as shown by the fact that the Banana Girls have no problem with getting whatever they need to pull off a mission.
This is shown by a visit to Club Banana, the unofficial name of their headquarters. It is "an enormous double penthouse in Midtown Atlanta" and as Mari (more on her in a moment) realizes when she first is invited to join put it, it was a "luxury apartment with its posh furnishings and expensive decor", showing "there was no way [the Banana Girls] could afford this type of opulence on college budgets".
Another sign of the sort of money backing this team, the team has an impressive-sized garage in the basement (which they call their Banana Cave); all the vehicles are of different makes and models and uses but all of them are banana-yellow in color and have pet names assigned them such as Big Banana, a massive SUV, and "Fat, Posh, Family, Business, Teen, and Bitsy", the last being a micro car - oh, there is also a convertible sports coupe named Hot Banana".
As a blurb for these adventures describe them, they are spy-thrillers which cross Charlie's Angels with the Gallagher Girls. One of the girls, when starting to explain what the team was, actually playfully began with "Once upon a time..." The tales also have the tag like of "Kicking Butt ... Saving the Day ... Getting the Guy ... The Spy Girls Way."
The Banana Girls have that highly unusual name because a) they all seem to absolutely adore the color yellow and b) it seems to be a play on the first names of the two founding members, Anna and Hannah. Beyond that, no clue.
When we first meet the team, it has four members. A fifth's invitation is the beginning of the first recorded adventure. The members are:
Anna Rivers - described as "a tall girl with deep brown skin and an athletic build" and "easily six feet tall and muscular but more in a fitness way than a body-building way".
Hannah McCarthy - described as "a young, slim, fair-skinned, with long silver-blond hair and crystal-blue eyes". She is a nut for gadgets.
Katie Okiishi - described as "a twenty-something" young woman, shorter than the others, with long, jet-black hair and dark eyes, of Asian descent.
Susan XXX - described as a woman with "deep-red, long, wavy hair" who is a whiz with computers.
Mari Sandoval - described as a college freshman "mostly of Mexican heritage", a student at Georgia Tech which is also where her mother was an alum as well as employed as a scientist and professor.
Good Lines:
- Susan explains to Mari early on that "we help people" to which Hannah adds, "but not if those people are nosy and ungrateful".
- Katie explains why she usually asks clueless with the many male friends she is seen frequently with, "the hottest guys always tend to be the dumbest. I have to act dumber than them if I'm going to get them to help me."