Samuel Greene is a student.
He is also a would-be spy, at least he is if you ask him. Well, maybe he would deny it because that is what spies do but in his head and heart, yeah, he is an up-and-coming intelligence operative.
In the meantime, he is a 'latch-key kid' who attends the Bedford View Primary because both his parents work very long and hard hours to be able to afford his going there. The bit downside to this is that he seldom sees them as they are always still at work.
Samuel is a pretty simple name for a boy ('Sam' is better) but his full name is Samuel Peter Rupert Orpen-Greene. That is not only a mouthful, it also, as a school librarian who does not like him for some reason pointed out, makes for an acronym of "SPROG", which is British slang for a raw recruit. [Just a note here but that librarian, Miss Sorrell, scares, well, everyone!]
But now it is time to get back to the spy business which is why the two adventures of Greene are in this compendium. Well, about that... He, um, is not really a spy, despite what he might think. He is a student who is interested in plants because he would like to help his mother grow vegetables in her garden and to learn how to do that he wants to read books about it in the library - yep, the same one with the spooky Miss Sorrel. And it is looking for some in the back stacks of the library he will get bonked on the head and wake up in the land of Gardinia and they will be having trouble and need someone from "the outside" to help find out what is causing the trouble and stopping it.
Sort of sounds like something a spy would do. Or a detective, more likely, but we will go with spy here because, well, the author or the publisher called this pair of adventures the "Diary of a 6th Grade Spy" - not a word of him being a 6th Grade Detective - so we have our reason for these stories being here. Plus both Greene and after a bit of time his colleague and partner, Abigail Hartley, are kind of having fun being spies in this fantasy land.