Young basketball fans will most appreciate the caper, but mystery buffs will also turn these pages eagerly. The minimal on-court action is nonetheless dramatic and briskly paced. As Stevie and Susan Carol team up with Chip to uncover the intricacies of the blackmail plan-and to try to foil it-the author's plotting entails some fancy footwork that will keep readers on their toes. Though they can't see the culprit during this conversation, it takes the youngsters no time at all to identify him as a member of MSU's faculty-ironically, an ethics professor. Yet the pace picks up when Feinstein casts the two aspiring young sports journalists in additional roles of sleuths: the pair overhears a man blackmailing Chip Graber, the star player (and son of the coach) of the Minnesota State team to throw the championship game against Duke. The story starts slowly with some superfluous dialogue and a surfeit of detail about specific players, coaches, sports writers and announcers. Taking center court is 13-year-old Stevie, who-along with Susan Carol, another eighth grader-landed tickets and press passes to the weekend's games by winning a writing contest sponsored by the U.S. ) novel set during a Final Four basketball tournament in New Orleans. Together, Chip, Stevie, and Susan Carol go through twists and turns of the plot, finding out that the people they thought they could trust cannot be trusted, and that the people they thought were responsible for the blackmail are in fact not involved in the way that they assumed.Sports and mystery get equal play in sportswriter and adult author Feinstein's ( A Season on the Brink Chip joins the two student reporters in the investigation to uncover who is responsible for the plot to blackmail him and why. They concoct a story to get into Chip's hotel room and confront Chip with the information they overheard. After overhearing the situation, Stevie and Susan Carol struggle with what to do with the information they've acquired and who they can tell the story to help them stop the blackmail.Īs Stevie and Susan Carol start their own investigation, they enlist the help of the blackmailee, Chip Graber. What the two take away from the conversation is that Chip is being blackmailed to throw the championship game between MSU and Duke. While looking around in the area where CBS sets up during the Final Four, Stevie and Susan Carol overhear a conversation between the star player for MSU, Chip Graber, and an unknown man in charcoal gray suit. As winners of the contest, Stevie and Susan Carol act as student reports covering the Final Four in New Orleans. Basket ball Writers Association essay contest.

Both kids are in junior high and winners of the U.S. The story follows the two main characters, Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson. Feinstein is a Duke graduate and former sports writer. Last Shot is a novel by the best-selling author John Feinstein.

The last shot john feinstein