The Pocket Wife

Finished June 4
The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford, performed by Cassandra Campbell

Dana Catrell may have been the last person to see Celia Steinhauser alive, but the problem is that Dana can't remember everything about that afternoon. She had a lot to drink, and Celia told her something about her husband that both shocked her and made her angry. Dana wondered why Celia was so upset about it herself, and whether Dana's anger overcame her.
Dana had an incident when she was in college where she was hospitalized at Bellvue, and diagosed with bi-polar disorder. She's had a bad time after the birth of her son, now in college himself, but has mostly lived a happy and normal life without medication. But she can feel the signs of an episode coming on, and she is trying to maintain control while she figures out her own actions that day.
Dana swears that Celia showed her a picture that she took of Peter on her phone, but the photo doesn't seem to be there. Dana is sure that one of Peter's own phone contacts was Celia, a woman he claims not to have known well, but when she checks, that contact doesn't lead to Celia. Is Dana imagining things? Dana knows that she has a motive to kill Celia, and the opportunity, but did she really do it? She hopes not, but all the things she remembers don't seem to be true.
The detective assigned to the case is Jack Moss. Jack has marital issues of his own and worries about his estranged son Kyle. Jack grabbed the case because he recognized Celia's name as being the same as Kyle's GED teacher. He worries about whether Kyle has anything to do with Celia's death, and even more so when some of the evidence involves Kyle. Jack is being pressured by one of the lawyers in the office to close the case, but he wants to make sure he does it right. Jack has feelings about cases, about when something is important in terms of evidence, but is he letting his worry about Kyle influence him too much?
The title of this book comes from an instance of Peter, Dana Catrell's husband of putting his phone in his pocket when she called him and it was an inconvenient time for him to talk, making her a pocket wife, easy to dismiss.
This book had me engrossed in Dana's story, hoping along with her that she hadn't killed Celia, worried that she had. I also really like Jack and his goodness.