Lonely Hearts — John Harvey

The first major case for Charlie Resnick and his team concerns a number of increasingly serious attacks on women who have been using the "Lonely Hearts" column of the local newspaper. Simultaneously, Resnick becomes involved with Rachel Chaplin, the social worker assigned to a family caught up in allegations of child abuse.

John Harvey's Charlie Resnick is British crime fiction's best-kept secret. In the ten novels Harvey wrote about Resnick before ending the series, he established his character as a believable ordinary policeman who investigated ordinary, everyday crime, rooted in the socioeconomic plight and drab lives of many people in the city of Nottingham.