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Nick Mamatas (famously called "a true Chaotic Neutral" by fellow writer Catherynne Valente) is a crafty writer, in every sense of the word. He leads writing workshops, he writes in a lit style (I am again using that word in multiple senses), you always sense he's writing a bit tongue-in-cheek and low-key making fun of readers who don't quite Get It.

I didn't quite get this one. The Second Shooter is a strange book, set in Mamatas's stomping grounds of the East Bay. Mike Karras is a "journalist" working for a shoestring publisher, investigating the phenomenon of second shooters after mass shooting events. After every incident - an assassination, a school shooting, a shopping mall terrorist attack - there are reports of a second shooter, someone the police never caught. Karras thinks there is something to this, and he's writing a book about it.

Following leads fed to him by shooting survivors, by a crazy talk radio host, by "fans" and fellow conspiracy theorists, chased by feds and drones, Karras spends some time living rough in Oakland, California, pursuing leads from a nice Ethiopian Christian girl who survived a shooting at her church, who seems both fond and contemptuous of him, while trying to uncover... the Truth.

I really was not sure where the story was going or what it was even about. Mamatas inserts sly observations throughout, poking at the obsessions of paranoid right wingers and sanctimonious leftists, but I remained unsure what the point was. Is it about America's gun culture? About conspiracy theories? About the psychology of mass shooters? About social media derangement? About people trying to make sense of the senseless? At times the story had a bit of Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Shea Illuminati vibe.

The ending is where it gets really strange and earns the "sci-fi" label, but I cannot say I was left satisfied, or any less perplexed.

The Second Shooter is a departure from Mamatas's previous books; he usually dabbles in Lovecraftian horror, and I have to admit I preferred them. This one was just kind of weird, and seemed more like something born in a brainstorming session, perhaps inspired by some of the weird Japanese SF that he edits at Haikasoru, that never quite cohered.