A Whiff of Murder: An A Cappella Mystery With a Twist of History (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781468131710)

Full disclosure: Peter L. Arango was not a Whiffenpoof. Peter L. Arango did not attend Yale. In fact, he was turned down twice. He didn't get into Andover either. Again, twice. He takes some comfort in knowing that in the same years that he applied, George W. Bush was accepted at both. His stepfather, Robert Jay Wolff, was Yale, Class of 1927. Wolff and his friends - Eddie Erich, Gardy Stern, and Dick Lowenstein - filled the quota of Jewish students admitted in their year. Arango heard the Spizzwinks(?) sing at a boarding school jamboree in 1963 and became a fan of collegiate a cappella for life. Arango founded an a cappella group, the Kokosingers, at Kenyon College; they will celebrate their fiftieth anniversary in 2017. He describes himself as a baritone with an unexceptional voice and range. Of his career as a singer and human, Arango admits, " I was never a soloist. When you have an ordinary voice, come from two nationalities, and are clearly multi-racial, you learn to blend." Urged to write a book he would like to read, Arango decided that he would love a mystery set against the backdrop of ivied halls, and he would love researching factual history that might cause a reader to wonder how and why. With not much time left to write both books, he determined to write one - a mystery set against a factual account of life at Yale in the twentieth century.