Review by Frank Plowright

Of all the recurring characters in Jean Van Hamme’s excellent mystery thriller XIII, the most frequent is Major Jones, lover, friend and sometimes saviour of the conflicted title star. She’s a supremely capable soldier, and fiercely loyal to General Ben Carrington.

Much of her adult background has been revealed in passing, but instead of taking the obvious route of looking in on a previous mission, writer Yann instead focuses on a brief period from Jones’ early 1970s youth. She’s twelve, but already brave, persistent and resourceful, while fiercely loyal to her older brother who’s gradually slipping into a dangerous life. Yann feeds in the political tensions of the time and doesn’t shy away from the era’s overt racism, nor the extreme methods used by the Black Panther revolutionaries to bring about change. The result is a dense, consistently engaging and unpredictable thriller. Be warned, though, that Yann doesn’t shy away from the use of offensive racist terms in asserting personalities.

Éric Henninot is an artist largely unknown to English language readers as so little of his work has been translated. However, he’s in the grand tradition of Franco-Belgian artists so complete as storytellers, also supplying the necessary action and emotions fluently, and creating their version of the USA with attention to decorative detail. The complexity to Little Jones means occasional scenes with an awful lot of dialogue, but Henninot still manages to provide attractive illustrations encompassing the many words.

Yann’s researched the parent series, and includes cameos, references and appearances from characters who have a role there, showing them as they were ten years earlier. Despite the obvious enjoyment of weaving events together, he never loses sight of this being Jones’ story, and has her displaying the characteristics at twelve that later forged the successful soldier. She stands up for herself, possesses incredible determination, and is a shrewd assessor of circumstances. By the end she’s hooked up with Carrington, but much has changed for those she’s dealt with. Yann even sets up a clever deception used in XIII. However, you can read Little Jones without having ever read XIII and still be immensely rewarded.

The three other volumes of XIII Mystery released in English to date are good, but this is a cut above, a real class act. Colonel Amos is next.