Contemporary realistic children's book published probably late-80s, set in DC.

[conuly]

Girl lives in DC. Ends up with Soviet friend - dad was a diplomat. Turns out the maid was spying on the Soviet family, and possibly also the US. The protagonist is very proud of living in DC and having tourists. She went to the FBI museum (?) every year and had her fingerprints taken. Her ambition, I think, was probably to be a spy one day.

I believe she met the Soviet (ambassador's?) kid because they shared a ballet class. Her father encouraged her to befriend the poor lonely girl. She wanted to do this anyway to spy on her, because she was sure they must be Up To No Good.

At one point the Soviet girl remarks on some homeless men with the comment that there are no poor people in the USSR. Our protagonist's father, more carefully, said that while it was true that the USSR took better care of its poor people, and there was less of a gap between the rich and the poor, there certainly were poor people in the USSR as well. (I'm not sure if the author was trying to be fair, or if she was trying to show that Americans should be honest, even when that means giving credit to our ideological enemies for doing something better than we do.)

I believe - but I don't know - that this book was published by Apple.

(Crossposted from reddit)

Comments

[conuly]

No. There are two sequels to Harriet the Spy (well, two written by Louise Fitzhugh, The Long Secret and Sport), this is neither of them. It was published too late to be any of those (and two early to be the sequel written by somebody else, Harriet Spies Again). Also, Harriet never got involved with government things, and lived in NYC :)

But thank you.

Edit: Sport is definitely the also-ran of the original sequels, btw, and was out of print for a very long time, but you can usually find a copy of The Long Secret if you try.