I have recently read Heather’s work as well as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. To a layman with a basic understanding of the Roman Empire, Heather’s argument has been the most convincing I’ve come across, is this a view reflected in the historical community? By extension, are there any books that I can read to gain a wider understanding of the historiography of the Western Roman Empire?
I think the short answer is "very good but he ignores too much to be correct."
Peter Heather is, unlike many authors of popular-history, not just a historian but also an expert in a relevant field. Roman-gothic relationships. And from personal experience I can tell you, if you want to know anything about the Goths you need to read heather and some peeps who's name curiously includes some version of "wolf"*. You can imagine that when he sets out to write a comprehensive but popular history of the fall of rome it will have a certain skew, be it because that is what he is most qualified to write about or not. I don't know if Heather really believes in classical "political history" rather than more modern approaches that take social, cultural, economic etc. Issues and structures into account or if he just does that because that is how you write a palatable popular history book.
So the parts that Heather delivers are great and well researched but to say "and that is why rome fell" is jumping the gun. There are plenty of socioeconomic issues that Heather ignores, like taxation, social shift, agriculture, christianity** ... ultimately Heather leaves out anything that would detract from his narrative focusing on what he knows and what supports his thesis of an abrupt end, caused by "northern barbarians", even ignoring political developments in the south or more crucially the eastern empire. He pretty much tells you how rome falls from the perspective of ... the nineteenth century, but with he sum of today's source knowledge. Today we have more avenues of inquiry and most big events have proven to be to complex to explain them using only one cause. Few things are certain lacking a time machine, but Monocausalism is a reliable path to Wrongtown. Generally I don't think there is a definitive current work on the fall of Rome that I would recommend to a layman***. If you really want to you might want to read Demandt on the topic but ... you could also just accept that "its complicated".
*there are other very qualified people when it comes to goths, but suffice it to say Heather is one of them. I personally prefer Herwig Wolfram, Stefanie Dick and Alexander Sarantis, but that's besides the point.
**especially arianism which is frankly baffling to me.
*** this isn't arrogance. Most works are just not as well written as Heather's and waffle a lot about how we don't really know anything, which is frustrating enough for me to read, but is well beyond what a layman is willing to endure to answer a seemingly simple question.
I would recommend a number of other works for a good overview. They were used in my Fall of the Roman Empire course and generated really good conversation when contrasted with each other.
The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Ward Perkins works a lot on the material culture of the Roman Empire and does an excellent job showing the physical impact of the loss of the Roman Empire. He provides a very wide survey on the impacts of Rome's collapse and offers an explanation for why.
How Rome Fell by Adrian Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is very layman friendly but his work is also another large survey that pays particular attention to the Roman Army. He is very insistent on a multicausal explanation.