Sing a Song of Vengeance

A serial killer slays a widowed mother, ripping a West Texas family apart and leaving two sisters to be raised in separate children's homes. The oldest daughter grows up to be a TV news crime reporter. She stumbles across the cold-case file of her mother's murder and ties it to other killings around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. During the investigation, the daughters not only learn about the killer, but about their parents and their own heritage. Authors Larry and Barbara Payton create a unique, almost sympathetic figure for the killer, a explore the real cost to families when murder takes a loved one. The collaborative voice of the Paytons reads like a single, forceful persona, yet this is their first effort together. Their years in West Texas and South Central New Mexico bring their settings to life for the reader who will recognize the truth of life in Sonora, Texas, Silver City New Mexico, and the Dallas metropolitan area. A polished romance writer under the name Barbara Jennison, she has 11 novels and numerous short stories and essays to her credit. She was raised in and around San Angelo working in both journalism and broadcast advertising. Her years in the Concho Valley help her characters ring true to the land of the true Western cowboys. For Larry, who spent his much of his youth in south-central New Mexico, but has traipsed all over the southwest, the novel is a first endeavor into mainstream fiction. The killer's trail covers highways and byways he himself has traveled He cut his teeth as a crime reporter and news bureau chief, before advancing to technical writing. He also spent more than two decades as a counselor and has expertise in the specific pathologies which form the psyche of the novel's killer. With well over half a century of combined writing experience, Barbara and Larry met as strangers to write Sing a Song of Vengeance. By the time the book was published, they had fallen in love and married. They live in Little Elm, TX, with an ever changing mixture of dogs and cats.