The Perfect Shot

The Perfect Shot, a 2005 young adult novel by Elaine Marie Alphin, centers on protagonist Brian Hammet's attempt to use basketball as a coping mechanism after the brutal shooting deaths of his former girlfriend and her family—a coping mechanism that threatens to keep him from dealing with his trauma, and its aftermath, head on. The novel is notable for including information about a real trial in American history involving a defendant who was wrongly accused and convicted of a crime. The frequent interpolations of information about this trial help underscore and elaborate Alphin's interest in the way ethnic stereotypes affect individuals' social and legal treatment. By interweaving her concerns for social justice into a story grounded in the sort of details that more immediately resonate with younger readers, Alphin helps to make large ideas about ethnicity, crime, and personal accountability accessible.

At the start of the novel, Brian Hammet has been shot and lies bleeding. He proceeds to tell his story through a series of flashbacks which, over time, begin to throw light on his current situation. His story begins with the murder of his former girlfriend, Amanda Daine, and her mother and little brother, who were shot to death in their garage. Amanda's father, former police officer Michael Daine, has been charged with the murder. Brian feels that Michael is not responsible, but trusts that the ongoing police investigation will lead to justice for everyone involved. To keep from thinking about Amanda's death and her father's trial, Brian tries to distract himself with his favorite past time, basketball. There, amidst the bustle of the court, he finds temporary relief. He is obsessed with making the perfect shot. However, in the end, even basketball provides him only small comfort, as tensions exist among the players on his team. Indeed, many of his team members, like Ricochet and Warren, face struggles of their own that they, too, try to avoid by throwing themselves into the game.

Brian's passive trust in the justice system starts to change after beginning a school assignment on Leo Frank. Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent, was wrongly convicted of killing a child factory worker named Mary Phagan in 1913. After Frank's sentence was commuted, he was lynched and killed by an outraged mob. His story made headlines; over time, researchers have concluded that he did not murder Phagan. As Brian continues to research Frank's case, he begins to see unexpected parallels between it and Amanda's father's situation. This forces Brian to acknowledge that his memory of a stranger in the neighborhood on the day of the murder might be important after all – both to solving Amanda's murder and to saving her father from an unfair conviction. Brian had notified the police of this figure when they spoke to him immediately after the murder, but they never followed up on the tip. Brian knows he needs to press the issue, but suspects that doing so might imperil his own life.



Not long after his research on Frank has begun to make Brian question the American legal process – or at least the fallibility of those involved in it – he learns that his teammate Julius has been arrested. Julius, who is one of the only black students in his school, was simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. His arrest is a result of racial profiling. Julius responds to his arrest by withdrawing from his social relationships, including with Brian.

The arrest deepens Brian's suspicion of a system that does not treat everyone equally. Moreover, his schoolmate Todd, who is working with Brian on his Leo Frank project, urges Brian to speak to the police again about the stranger who might be connected to Amanda's murder. Brian does not come to his final decision easily, but eventually does make a resolution – and ends up paying a high price for doing the right thing.

Alphin's is a rare young adult novel that not only touches upon the issue of racism in the modern world, but also makes it the center of the plot. Brian exists outside the institutional oppression that Alphin is concerned to expose, but he learns to identify with those caught within it through his study of Leo Frank and his relationship with Julius. Ultimately, Alphin's novel is an exploration of the notion of justice itself, a concept that tends to be treated as objective and immutable, but which is, in fact, heavily shaped by those in power. Alphin suggests that seeing that true justice is done requires input from all members of the community – even when standing up for the right thing is difficult or dangerous.