A Brief History of Seven Killings

Published in 2014, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a literary crime novel by Jamaican writer Marlon James. To serve as the foundation for his novel, James builds the narrative around a singular historical event: the 1976 assassination attempt on Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley, whom he fictionalizes as the Singer for thematic effect. James draws on his experiences growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1970s, and on his parents’ careers in law enforcement. The novel won several prizes, most notably the prestigious Booker Prize in 2015.

A Brief History of Seven Killings follows a large cast of characters led by gang member Josey Wales. When Josey fails to assassinate a famous cultural figure known as the Singer, he catapults himself into the illegal drug trade between Colombia and the United States. The novel traces Josey’s rise and fall and chronicles the lives of those affected, from an innocent bystander who stumbles into the Singer’s house during the ambush to an American journalist trying to collapse two decades’ worth of details into an authoritative account. The novel examines The Illusion of Ambition and Legacy, Diaspora and the Promise of Escape, and Factionalism as a Catalyst for Social Violence.

This study guide refers to the paperback edition of the novel, published by Oneworld Publications in 2015.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, gender discrimination, antigay bias, sexual violence and harassment, rape, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, sexual content, death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and mental illness.

Plot Summary

The novel begins in 1976, one day before a prominent Jamaican cultural figure known only as the Singer is scheduled to perform a peace concert in Kingston. The concert is intended to bring together the socialist People’s National Party, currently in power, and the socially conservative Jamaica Labor Party (JLP). Both parties are backed by Kingston’s biggest criminal organizations—the Eight Lanes and Copenhagen City, respectively.

Copenhagen City Don Papa-Lo, a longtime friend of the Singer, wants to ensure the success of the concert. He worries that the Singer is in danger, having been held at gunpoint because of a botched horse race fixing scheme. Unbeknownst to Papa-Lo, a plot is being hatched to assassinate the Singer, led by Copenhagen City head enforcer Josey Wales. Josey resents the Singer for trying to represent the masses of Jamaica despite his fame and affluence. He also resents Papa-Lo for backing the demolition of a tenement, which resulted in a shooting that nearly killed Josey in 1966.

Josey collaborates with CIA operatives, top JLP politician Peter Nasser, and Cuban counterrevolutionary Doctor Love, to secure weapons and access to the Singer’s house before the concert. Josey and his right-hand man, a queer gang member named Weeper, recruit several young gang members to assist in the operation, promising them free cocaine. Papa-Lo realizes that Josey is planning something big, but is ambushed by the police and incarcerated before he can intervene.

The assassination attempt fails when Josey shoots the Singer near the heart instead of in the head. Nina Burgess, the Singer’s former lover, wanders into the house, hoping to ask for his help with leaving Jamaica. She encounters Josey, who threatens her into fleeing Kingston. The Singer also leaves the country. The hit squad disperses; two members, Bam-Bam and Demus, are immediately killed.

Over the next three years, Papa-Lo and Eight Lanes Don Shotta Sherrif organize a peace council to resolve their tensions and convince the Singer to return to Jamaica. Papa-Lo also conducts a covert campaign of retribution against the Singer’s assailants, who name Josey as the mastermind of the operation. Josey decides to leverage his work on the ambush and his link to Doctor Love to join the Medellín cartel. He works with the police to assassinate Copenhagen City leadership, including Papa-Lo. He also sends his top assassin, Tony Pavarotti, to kill former Rolling Stone journalist Alex Pierce after Alex inadvertently reveals Josey to be the man who shot the Singer. However, when Alex manages to kill Tony instead, Josey decides to carry on with his plans to work with Medellín, escalating his efforts to bring drugs to New York.

In 1985, Josey leads a new gang called the Storm Posse, who dominate the drug trafficking industry in New York City. Josey has installed Weeper to manage operations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, Weeper’s personal quest to explore his queer sexuality puts him at odds with his rival within the gang, rising enforcer Eubie Brown. Alex interviews Tristan Phillips, an incarcerated member of the Ranking Dons—the Storm Posse’s rivals—who helps him realize why Josey sent Tony to kill him. Meanwhile, Nina is living in New York under a new identity, Dorcas Palmer, hiding from Josey while looking after Ken Colthirst, an elderly man who has memory loss.

Josey visits New York after hearing reports of Weeper’s mismanagement. When Josey arrives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, his anger is stoked by a man who shoots urine at him outside a crack house. Josey goes into the crack house and brutally murders everyone inside. Meanwhile, Eubie makes a deal with Medellín cartel kingpin Griselda Blanco to eliminate the Ranking Dons from Miami if she can assassinate Weeper. Blanco hires queer hitman John-John K to do the job. John-John, who misses his ex-boyfriend Rocky, finds a companion in Weeper before he lets him die of a drug overdose.

Six years later, Josey is incarcerated because of the crack house massacre. He is visited by Doctor Love, who comes to kill him on orders of the Medellín cartel, which fears that Josey will cooperate with the US government for a plea bargain. Alex is visited by Eubie, who wants him to revise his seven-part exposé on the crack house massacre and the Storm Posse. Eubie wants the narrative to distance Josey from the gang to consolidate his power as their new leader. When Nina, now living under the name Millicent Segree, learns that Josey has died, she lets go of the paranoia that has haunted her for years and calls her estranged sister in Jamaica.