Below is the complete list of J.D. Kirk’s DI Heather Filson books in publication order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
DI Heather Filson Books in Publication Order
- The One That Got Away (2023)
- This Little Piggy (2024)
About DI Heather Filson
J.D. Kirk’s DI Heather Filson books form a smaller, sharper branch of his Scottish crime fiction, built around a detective who is clearly capable but far from easy company. Current series listings consistently identify two main novels, The One That Got Away and This Little Piggy, which makes this a focused line rather than one of those detective series that immediately sprawls into a dozen loosely connected cases. That compactness suits Heather Filson. She feels like a character designed to arrive with force, not to be padded out with routine.
What stands out first is her personality. Kirk’s own material presents Heather as someone who can divide opinion quickly, and that edge matters to the books. She is not written to be cosy, reassuring, or conventionally warm. She is sharp-tongued, difficult, and very obviously capable of getting under other people’s skin, which gives the series a different energy from the more team-driven or banter-heavy detective lines in his wider catalogue. The books are stronger because they do not try to soften her into generic detective likability. Her abrasiveness is part of the point. It creates friction, and friction is one of the things these novels use very well.
The first novel, The One That Got Away, opens with the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl, but the case is immediately complicated by the fact that the missing girl’s grandfather is a notorious Glasgow gangster. That setup tells you a lot about the kind of series this is going to be. These are not quiet procedural mysteries built around tidy clue patterns. They are crime thrillers where policing, organised crime, family pressure, and public danger overlap from the start. The case is not only about finding a missing teenager. It is also about stopping a city from becoming even more violent because the wrong man believes he has been crossed.
The Glasgow setting is important here. Kirk himself noted that Heather’s books are not set in the Highlands in the way much of his Logan fiction is, though they are still connected to that broader fictional world. That shift in location changes the feel of the series. Glasgow gives the books a harder urban edge, less isolated than the Highland novels and more charged with gangland tension, public confrontation, and institutional strain. It also helps the series stand apart inside Kirk’s bibliography. Heather is not just another detective working a different desk. She belongs to a different temperature of story.
That becomes even clearer in This Little Piggy. Official descriptions place Heather in a murder investigation while she is being harassed by both an unwanted new partner and a teenage true-crime podcaster, all while tensions between the police and the public escalate into riots across Glasgow. That is a smart continuation because it does not merely repeat the first book’s structure. Instead, it widens the social pressure around Heather. The case still matters, but now the city itself feels unstable, and the series starts showing how quickly criminal investigation can become entangled with public anger, media attention, and institutional fragility.
One of the most appealing things about the DI Heather Filson books is that they seem to know exactly how much room the character needs. With only two novels so far, the line feels deliberate rather than overextended. There is enough space for Heather’s personality to bite, for the setting to establish itself, and for the books to develop a recognisable identity, but not so much that the concept starts to blur. Within Kirk’s wider Scottish crime fiction, Heather feels like a useful contrast to his other leads: less about comfort, more about collision. That gives the series its own voice. It is brisk, hostile, urban, and driven by a detective who is memorable precisely because she is not trying very hard to be loved.