A Caitlin Reece Mystery, Book 4 – An urgent and desperate telephone call late at night brings to painful life a ghost from Caitlin Reece's past. Jonna Rowan, a bad-girl high school crush, begs Caitlin to meet her, saying she fears for her life. But Caitlin is met by Jonna’s 10-year-old daughter, Jory, who explains that Kirk, her father, murdered her mother in a motel room. The police say Jonna's body is not at the motel and that Jory's account has “a lot of inconsistencies.” Recent scars on Jory’s back are real and her tales of abuse cause Caitlin to invoke help from Gray Ng, a psychic animal whisperer, Francis, a shady computer nerd and lovable sometime sidekick Lester, a photographer who longs for adventure. When Kirk kidnaps Jory, harming Ng in the incident at Caitlin’s home, the race is on to stop the father from further harming his daughter. The trail leads to a remote island in BC and, in the face of rugged weather, a final pulse-pounding confrontation at an abandoned family summer home and mine takes place to try to free Jory before it’s too late. This fourth of six Caitlin Reece adventures was first published in 1992. Her second novel, Ninth Life, won a Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery.

Meet Caitlin Reece. Smart, cool, tough. A dropout from conventional life. Highly competent in her chosen profession. She has no office, obtains clients by referral only, and never leaves her home without her .357 Magnum Smith and Wesson. Val Frazier, Victoria's star TV anchorwoman, is Caitlin's newest client. She is the victim of a viciously homophobic blackmailer who has discovered her relationship with Tonia Konig. Tonia is a lesbian-feminist professor, an outspoken, passiontely committed proponent of nonviolence. She is enraged by her own helplessness, she is outraged by Caitlin's challenge to her most fundamental beliefs, and by Caitlin herself, whom she considers a "a thug". As Caitlin stalks the blackmailer and his accomplices through the byways of the city of Victoria, she uncovers ever darker layers of danger surrounding Tonia. And she struggles against a new and altogether unwanted complication: she is increasingly attracted to the woman who despises her. The Always Anonymous Beast marks two auspicious debuts: Laren Wright Douglas, a most talented and exciting writer: and Caitlin Reece - intelligent, complex, sharply humorous - one of the most intriguing women ever to appear in mystery fiction. Originally published by Naiad Press 1987.

In the acclaimed debut of The Always Anonymous Beast, Lauren Wright Douglas introduced tough, resourceful Caitlin Reece, one of the most unconventional women ever to appear in a mystery novel. The uncompromising private detective once again prowls her terrain of Victoria, British Columbia, investigating a case as dramatic and immediate as today’s headlines. Caitlin is hired by a woman code-named Shrew, to pick up a package. Caitlin is sickened to the depths of her being by the contents of the package: a blind and maimed cat, and photographs of animal experimentation. And now Shrew is dead. As a member of the militant animal rights organization Ninth Life, she had infiltrated Living World, a cosmetics company.  The other members of Ninth Life suspect she was betrayed by someone within their own ranks and murdered because of what she learned. The director of Living World has made vehement public denials that his company is experimenting on animals for product development. Caitlin sees only one answer: to penetrate the security systems protecting Living World – alarms, dogs, guards – and discover the truth for herself.