YA or STFU

The Perfect Shot, by Elaine Marie Alphin

Alphin, Elaine Marie (2005). The Perfect Shot. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books. 359 pages.
After his girlfriend and her family are killed while he shoots hoops in his driveway next door, Brian finds himself disappearing into basketball (he’s on the school team) to avoid thinking about the crime and the fact that his girlfriend’s father is being charged with her death. When he is assigned to research a turn-of-the-century court case in history class, Brian and his research partner, Todd, the school outcast, begin to compare the historic case of justice gone wrong to the more current events to which he is personally attached. The research, combined with a racially charged incident into which Brian and a teammate are drawn, leads Brian to question the findings of the police in the case of his girlfriend’s death and to re-evaluate the events of that tragic day.
I don’t normally like the school-assignment-extends-to-real-life trope in young adult novels; however, it kinda works in this one. Mainly because Alphin doesn’t go for the “Shakespeare Applies to Everything” model and exposes us to a lesser known “lesson” from history. That said, there are some moments of overblown drama, most notably in the first chapter–the girlfriend’s death, told from her perspective!!–and throughout the novel as the details from the climax are drawn out between the chapters of the main text. The mystery element was mildly thrilling (a la Joan Lowery Nixon in her later period), if not a bit obvious (I wonder who that jogger in the sweatsuit was?), and–I’ll admit it–I’m a sucker for some overblown suspense.