Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings ****

A Brief History of Seven Killings is a kaleidoscopic epic about rival posses in 1970s Jamaica and the wider forces that fueled their violence. It is not brief (686 pages) and features countless killings. The story covers a couple of decades, but it swirls around one central event: the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in December 1976.

Numerous characters take turns as narrators. Their distinct voices and points of view are the best thing about the book. Many of them use Jamaican patois, with a few explicitly calling out the differences between American and Jamaican slang. The sense of time and place is strong. When we're introduced to the CIA section chief in Kingston, for example, he vividly describes the knock-off fast food restaurant King Burger: Home of the Whamperer. One stylistic decision I found distracting was always referring to Bob Marley as The Singer. It felt like an abstraction in the midst of palpable concrete details.

The story takes place over four time periods: 1976, 1979, 1985, and 1991. The portion in 1970s Jamaica is far stronger with its Cold War politics and local color. When the story moves to 1980s America, it simplifies into a story about the drug trade and loses its distinctive flavor. The narrative voices start to all sound the same; for example, I had a hard time telling the two gay characters apart even though one was a Jamaican and the other was a white guy from Chicago.