Proximity - Lexi Mills 2 by Brian Shea and Stacy Lynn Miller

 

Book releases 9th February 2023

I received a ARC of this book and my thanks to the team of NetGalley and the author for the copy. 

All views expressed in this review are my own and based on my reading of this book. Some of the initial comments were made as I progressed in this book and I have not tried editing them as it expresses my contiguous thoughts as I proceeded with the story.

Description

An old foe has returned for revenge…but Lexi Mills never backs down from a fight.

When chaos erupts at a local grocery store in a quiet town near Sacramento, police arrive to discover a horrifying scene—explosive devices trapping a crowd of civilians inside the store, ready to detonate at the push of a button. After ATF explosives expert Lexi Mills arrives on the scene, she quickly realizes that this hostage situation runs far deeper than she imagined…

Locked in a desperate struggle with a vengeful madman while racing against the clock, Lexi must use all of her cunning to rescue the innocent hostages; a situation that forces her to grapple with impossible questions.

But her enemies aren’t going down without a fight, and Lexi will need to put her life on the line and push her skills to their limits if she wants to get everybody out unscathed…

About the Author(s) - Brian Shea and Stacy Lynn Miller

The author duo are both from serving backgrounds one from the Navy and the other Air Force. 

Shea spent most of his adult life in service to his country and local community. He has honorably served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and as a Detective with ten years of law enforcement experience. He has also spent five years as a fifth-grade school teacher. 

Stacy is a fighter of sorts in her life. She took up writing after retiring from the Air Force. She is a Visually impaired, she is a proud stroke survivor with over twenty years of toting a gun and police badge.

Proximity - Lexi Mills 2

This is the second book of a series featuring titular character Lexi Mills and despite flashbacks to the earlier book can be read as a standalone novel. 

I have been expanding my reading horizon with NetGalley reading new authors writing on my favorite topics especially thrillers. This is my first book from the authors. 

The story is a taut thriller featuring Lexi as a much decorated ATF agent, one who has received name and fame in the line of duty having foiled an assassination attempt on a Governor. Right through the book we see her character as someone passionate about her duty and an expert of sorts on diffusing explosives as well as one with an encyclopedic memory of various types of mines and bombs. 

I got pulled into the book initially by the name and the cover picture which frankly took me off in a different direction making me feel this was aa story about an UFO landing on a field and maybe something to do with crop circles. 

It was when I read the Book Blurb that I got an inkling on the story line so for me the cover was a red flag. 

Coming back to the story the years of law enforcement experience of the writer duo reflects well in the writing with the police processes in handling a crisis spot on. 

Here in this book we have what seems to be a kidnapping for money blowing up into a major hostage crisis involving terrorists, bombs and prisoner release.

This is also where the story nods its head to its prequel and brings Lexi Mills into the story as the person demanded by the kidnapper to participate as the representative of law enforcement in this crisis.    

A terrorist with a history with Lexi has set up a chessboard to trap and kill her in the line of duty and expose her as a false hero in the process securing release for his brother. 

The story pans out with the usual and has all the items for an intense drama with the police, the FBI, an eager beaver by the books SWAT, hostages at different locations, a reluctant participant blackmailed to become the villain, bombs placed strategically, protagonist challenged to prove herself and a terrorist with a bone to grind with her. The story moves fast and the twists and expected turns coming every other page. 

 

The story gives us a bird's eye view of Lexi's personal life and life after losing a limb and becoming a prosthetic limb user. Her struggles and her success at regaining her work life is something that I loved reading about in this book. Her love and family life is also a part of this story and we see her travails and struggles to maintain her relationship with her job and more her singlemindedness to duty being the biggest constraint. The story gives us stories about people like we see in our lives and their challenges like Nita her friend and one whom Lexi hopes to propose to one day is struggling with her addiction and rehabilitation after surgery and who also faces the mental strain of loving someone who is a dedicated officer and who doesn't think consequences while following her duty where she has already faced death before.  

As a person who engages with people in the sphere of disability as a social activist trying to make society aware of the importance of Inclusion and Access for all, this story gave me characters that are a representation of the eco-system. We have Lexi the principal character as a person with a prosthetic limb and Dylan a child, one of the hostages has a hearing disability and is learning lip reading and sign language. The strength and independence of both the characters is a refreshing reading. 

Lexi the hero of this piece feels that receiving awards and medals for doing her job was unnecessary and embarrassing and it is almost like being portrayed as inspiration porn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration_porn) and as a reader I could identify it. I appreciate Stacy drawing on her own experiences with challenges in vision and extending them to the book. 

Belcher senior comes across as a villain who is hell bent on revenge while fulfilling his larger plan. His brother "Amadeus" comes across as a smug sick b****** who doesn't care two hoots for others lives and this is where I feel the duo of Brian and Stacy have excelled. 

What did not feel clear was how Belcher comes across as a master terrorist who seems to plan his activities to a T but has no back-up to his plan at the store. The original kidnapping and rescue was also where his planning seemed to falter as not a single bomb explodes and Lexi decodes his challenge quite well. 

The too obvious love between Lexi and Nita is again sometimes a bit of drag and does not add to the story. Nita's aloofness due to a combination of stress, medicine and drugs should have been enough and apart from the first meeting which one could understand what with a Damocles sword hanging on Lexi, the rest was just chaff. Nita's character could have been more clingy with her background not Lexi. 

Another thing that rankled was that the character Biscuit conveniently knows about the only Achilles heel of the shed where Belcher's stooges have left his kidnapped family. Too pat a scenario.

Notwithstanding the above, this series stands out as a book of real looking characters with their scars and flaws both physical and mental, real and imagined, fighting with their own demons of livelihood, addiction, confidence, physical challenges and living their lives. 

A worth read and recommended  to all. 

4 stars through and through. Brian and Stacy have it in them to take this up several notches. Best of luck to the duo. 

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