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It isn’t the big things Peter does that make Dana want to leave him; it’s more the smaller things, like sticking her inside his pocket in the middle of a thought—these demeaning, shrinking things he does that make her feel as trivial as a sneeze.” Dana Catrell leads a quiet life in a suburb a stone’s throw from Manhattan. She spends her days tidying, reading, missing her son who’s away at college, and wondering what went wrong in her marriage to her husband, Peter, who comes home late most nights and makes her feel as unimportant as a pocketful of loose change.
Then on one horrific day, Celia—Dana’s friend and neighbor—is found murdered . . . and Dana’s life suddenly begins to spiral out of control as she feels herself sliding toward the brink of insanity. Dana suffers from bipolar disorder, and she can’t account for the troubling gaps in her memory on the afternoon of Celia’s death. Even more terrifying, Dana was the last person to see her friend alive on that deadly day when Celia revealed a disturbing secret.
Is murder on Dana’s mind—or is it all in her head? And is there a killer lurking inside her . . . or is there one out there in the shadows of reality, waiting to strike again? “Exceptional.”—Chevy Stevens, New York Times bestselling author
About the author
Susan Crawford grew up in Miami, Florida, and graduated from the University of Miami with a BA in English and a minor in psychology. She later moved to New York City and then Boston before settling in Atlanta to raise three daughters and work in the field of adult education. A member of the Atlanta Writers Club and the Village Writers, Susan teaches at Georgia Piedmont Technical College and dabbles in local politics. She lives with her husband and a trio of rescue cats in Atlanta, where she enjoys reading books, writing books, rainy days, and spending time with the people she loves.
Summary
A stylish psychological thriller with the compelling intrigue of The Silent Wife and Turn of Mind and the white-knuckle pacing of Before I Go to Sleep-in which a woman suffering from bipolar disorder cannot remember if she murdered her friend.
Dana Catrell is shocked when her neighbor Celia is brutally murdered. To Dana's horror, she was the last person to see Celia alive. Suffering from mania, the result of her bipolar disorder, she has troubling holes in her memory, including what happened on the afternoon of Celia's death.
Her husband's odd behavior and the probing of Detective Jack Moss create further complications as she searches for answers. The closer she comes to piecing together the shards of her broken memory, the more Dana falls apart. Is there a murderer lurking inside her . . . or is there one out there in the shadows of reality, waiting to strike again?
A story of marriage, murder, and madness, The Pocket Wife explores the world through the foggy lens of a woman on the edge.
Additional text
“Great premise, and characters, and a wonderfully evocative setting, heavy with heat and suburban boredom, and the uneasy threat of not quite knowing what is going on. Really great.”
