JESSICA JONES

Jessica Jones is an agent with the Metropolitan Special Branch.

Being such makes her one of the police officers who span the gap between the normal Scotland Yard detectives whose normal clientele are crooks and murderers and rapists and other low-lifes, and the operatives from MI-5 and MI-6 who make seem to have more glamorous assignments but who lack the ability to legally apprehend their own forms of miscreants.

Jones, being with Special Branch and having been there for some time as the series starts, gets a wide assortment of cases which tasks her abilities as both a cop and an eventual supervisor but these same assignments and the way she handles them also reveals how very good she is at her job. By no means perfect and with the tendency to take her job a bit more seriously than might be good for her mental well-being, Jones is impressive to those who work for her or over her and even to those who have the misfortune of running up against her. The latter, though, tend to show their appreciation for her skills by shooting at her, a less than desired form of accolade.

As the series opens, she is 35 years old, divorced from a marriage many years before, living with her boyfriend and fellow SB officer, Tom, and quite happy with her life. She has worked over her career in the various sub-departments that the Special Branch handles so she knows her way around an investigation, interviewing witnesses, and, for the kind of work she is getting into now, being able to handle herself in a battle. While she has not had to yet take a life, that fact changes very early in the first book, an action that really brings out the seriousness of her job.

By description, she is on the short side, being around 5'3 and fairly light but judging by the number of times men meeting her give her frame not once but often two looks indicates she is quite pleasant to watch. She does not flaunt her sexuality but she does not hide from it either. Like most things in Jones' life, it is so she deals with it. Jones is not light-headed or silly or ditsy. She is not callous or jaded or cynical or angry. She is a normal person doing an unnormal job and she is quite good at it, getting better as each adventure passes.

There are often two dangers that an author makes when creating a new character who must go up against very nasty people while working with other very dangerous sorts, something that Mr. Nicole has the protagonist Jessica Jones do all the time in this series. Luckily for us readers, the highly talented Mr. Nicole does not succomb to either.

The first is the inclination to make the party out-badass the badasses, being the toughest person in the room, able to pull bullets out of his or her own body with teeth alone. The second is the other extreme, being the helpless or hapless victim through everything and needing the constant salvation by others.

Jones can hold her own in pretty good stead but she is by no means the top-dog. She is brave enough in one scene to walk into the lion's den all by herself knowing that she could likely get killed. When things do turn badly, she survives quite well until enemy forces suddenly become too much. Captured, she muses to herself that she hopes the guys handling her backup were paying attention. If I were someone in danger needing a minder, I would hope that person was Jones although since she is shown as human, sometimes her mindees do not fare so well.

Readers of this six-book series will fare quite well, though, and I highly recommend it for solid adventures, characters, bad guys, and action. The plotting is first-rate and the writing style keeps you reading.