In The Big Payoff, Peters is employed in the research department of New World Oil Company, a position that suits this now reformed blackmailer. Happy with her lover, Harry, Anna has abandoned the seductive intellectual and psychological game of blackmail for the straight and narrow.
But mysterious deaths among New World's British contacts convince Anna that something is wrong in the executive suite. Worse, she is soon blackmailed by a British secret service agent who's following the same trail.
Anna reluctantly bugs her boss's phone and copies company files, but when her British contact turns up dead, Anna finds that she- and Harry_ are in mortal danger. Her old skills come in handy as she tries to keep ahead of ruthless killers, first in Washington, D.C. and then in the north of Scotland.
The Big Payoff was my first novel, the result of reading a powerful number of detective stories during a spell of illness. I had been particularly irritated by the conventional picture of most women in detective fiction and set out deliberately to make Anna different from the pretty, blonde and available stereotype so beloved of James Bond and his descendents.
I never intended put her in a whole series, but she kept coming back, and I hope readers will enjoy this chance to revisit her first outing.
The Big Payoff was issued in British, Danish and Japanese editions and was a selection of the Detective Book Club. It was an Edgar Award nominee.
Quotes and reviews from 1976:
New York Times:
"The Big Payoff is fast and lively"
"The book is excellent, one of the best thrillers I've read in years. It puts Miss Law right in the top class. And the heroine is about as tough as Marlowe or Archer." Rex Warner