The Heath is the first in a new detective series featuring DI Love. There is a sniper killing off poor dogs as they and their owners walk along the Heath in a wealthy neighborhood outside of London. DE Love and his team cannot find a reason for such horror, nor can they get a description on the killer who seemingly vanishes even when there is a crowd.

On the other side of town, Jane Harkness is a psychologist who has been hired to work with military men who are suffering from PTSD. Harkness soon realizes that, despite her expertise, she is way over head with the trauma some of these men faced and are still enduring.

There are two distinct storylines to The Heath - that of DI Love and the one involving Jane Harkness. Eventually, of course, the two overlap as you knew they would but they remain, still, very separate stories. As often as I read books, I am very accustomed to parallel stories, two timelines, etc., yet somehow this one didn't work for me. I was very invested in DI Love, his wife, his team, the dogs. I was less so with Jane and her own strangeness, nor did I feel the need to read about every single soldier that she came in contact with. I got it. I understand. There is PTSD and there is trauma. There was no need to hit me over the head with it. I could have just read about the one soldier, the sniper, and saved myself about one hundred pages. However, I do think that the ultimate goal of the book was to sell the reader on sympathizing with the soldiers, not selling the reader on a new detective series featuring a really interesting character. That's sad because I really liked DI Love.


I read this book via #Netgalley.