A Brief History of Seven Killings

Addressing the Singer, Bam-Bam tells his story. 

Bam-Bam is born in the Eight Lanes, a gang stronghold and ghetto. Bam-Bam grows up admiring the Singer, a cultural figure who rose to prominence from similarly difficult circumstances. Bam-Bam’s experience of poverty drives his desire for violence.

Bam-Bam is saved by his father during a gang shootout. Two days later, Bam-Bam’s father accuses his mother of getting a new dress from her lover. Bam-Bam’s mother returns with a gang enforcer named Funnyboy. Funnyboy rapes Bam-Bam’s father before killing him and Bam-Bam’s mother. Bam-Bam escapes to Copenhagen City, the chief rival of the Eight Lanes, where he is adopted by Don Papa-Lo. Papa-Lo’s head enforcer, Josey Wales, teaches Bam-Bam to shoot a gun. Bam-Bam plans his revenge on Funnyboy.

In December 1976, Bam-Bam is 14 years old. Josey acquires guns from three men: a Syrian, an American, and a third man called Doctor Love.

Barry Diflorio is the CIA station chief in Jamaica. His life is monotonous, which he takes to mean that his operations are going according to plan.

Barry registers several recent arrivals in Kingston, including the filmmaker son of the former station chief and several musicians participating in a concert organized by the incumbent government party, the People’s National Party (PNP). Barry has also been monitoring a rogue agent named William Adler, who previously leaked top-secret information to the public. Adler claims that the CIA is backing government opposition—the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP)—by supporting gang violence to destabilize the government. Some time ago, an unauthorized wharf shipment mysteriously disappeared. Barry worries that Adler might know things that Barry doesn’t.

While the Eight Lanes back the socialist PNP, Copenhagen City is associated with the conservative JLP. The Singer is suspected to be a PNP sympathizer, but he and Papa-Lo have been friends since they were young, which makes Papa-Lo worry for his friend’s life.

Several months earlier, a group of freelance gang members schemed to fix a horse race. The horse jockey and two of the gang members fled to Miami with the race winnings. Because the scheme was planned at the Singer’s house, the remaining gang members threatened the Singer to compensate them for their lost profits.

Papa-Lo hopes to live to old age, but realizes that there are no elderly people in his neighborhood—most have early, violent deaths. He is willing to die for the Singer but worries this will not be enough to save the Singer.

Nina Burgess’s parents are robbed late one night. Nina’s father is disappointed by his failure to protect his home. Nina is more disappointed about the fact that her parents lost what little money they had. She goes to the Singer’s house to ask him for help in bringing her parents to Miami.

Four years earlier, Nina was seeing a white American student named Danny. The two of them attended a party thrown by the Singer’s record label. Sometime later, Nina and her sister Kimmy attended another party at the Singer’s house. Nina stayed behind and had sex with the Singer, inspiring the song “Midnight Ravers.”

Nina is barred from entering the Singer’s house by security. She waits.

Bam-Bam is offended by the Singer’s false modesty and his association with the Eight Lanes. The Syrian, the American, and Doctor Love import goods and weapons to buy the loyalty of Copenhagen City gang members, including Bam-Bam. The gunrunners want to use violence to shift the tide of the coming election, so that the JLP can return to power. When the Singer’s cultural influence inspires a populist movement to resist violence, the Syrian suspects that the Singer is trying to use his connection to Papa-Lo to turn Copenhagen City over to the PNP.

Bam-Bam observes Josey’s aspirations to lead Copenhagen City. He is afraid of calling him out because of Josey’s impulsive violence. To test if Bam-Bam is “ready to be a man” (37), Josey makes him kill a boy captured from the more affluent, PNP-sympathetic neighborhood of Rema. Josey uses Bam-Bam’s resentment over the boy’s privilege to provoke Bam-Bam to shoot.

Josey waits for Weeper, another gang member, at a strip club. Josey believes himself to be culturally and politically aware because of his education. Weeper became a fan of British philosopher Bertrand Russell during his incarceration.

Like Bam-Bam, Josey resents the Singer’s false modesty and Papa-Lo’s rejection of the violence in Kingston. Josey wants to use the violence to cement his power over Copenhagen City and launch drug trafficking operations in the United States. This is why Josey has meetings with an American gunrunner, a CIA field agent named Louis Johnson. Johnson indicates that the CIA are worried about the Singer. Josey knows the CIA will betray him once their work is done, so he is meeting Weeper to arrange some protection against them.

Nina continues to wait outside the Singer’s house. She wonders if her sister Kimmy has gone to visit her parents yet, but doubts it: Kimmy is becoming rebellious, as evidenced by her affinity for Rastafarianism.

Nina tells the security guard that she is pregnant with the Singer’s baby, which does not work. A white man arrives and introduces himself as Alex Pierce, a Rolling Stone magazine reporter. He claims to have an appointment to interview the Singer, but the guards deny him entry as well. Alex unsuccessfully tries to bribe them.

Alex knows that there is an interesting story to be told about Jamaica, which Nina disagrees with. Alex eventually leaves. Nina remains.

A gang member named Demus tells his story to the Singer. 

One morning, Demus is wrongfully accused of raping a church lady. Although he denies the allegation, Demus experiences physical and emotional abuse from the police. He is incarcerated for a week before the church lady declares that the rapist was from a different neighborhood. Demus takes revenge by shooting at the police the next time they enter Copenhagen City.

Demus is invited to join a horse race-fixing scheme at the Singer’s house while he is away. Demus and another gang member named Heckle kidnap the jockey and threaten him. When the jockey and the money disappear, they start visiting the Singer’s house to claim compensation.

Josey recruits Demus as a gunman, paying him with cocaine to relieve his chronic leg pain. The only other thing that helps to relieve Demus’s pain is the Singer’s music. He is sickened to learn that Josey wants him to help assassinate the Singer, but his addiction to cocaine persuades him. Demus helps execute the wharf robbery

Alex Pierce is supposed to write about British musician Mick Jagger in Kingston, but he ignores Jagger because he wants to find a real story about Jamaican life beneath the veneer of its upper classes and the tourists enjoying the country’s tropical climate.

Alex finds a lead: the Singer’s association to Papa-Lo and Eight Lanes Don Shotta Sherrif. Alex’s suspicions are supported by the arrival of Mark Lansing, a filmmaker hired to film the peace concert. Alex loosely connects Lansing’s presence to William Adler’s leak about the CIA presence in Jamaica and the imminent election.

Alex admits that when he arrived in Jamaica, he felt he could stop trying to escape where he came from.

Josey describes Weeper as a man with plenty of stories to tell. In 1967, Weeper was arrested, tortured, and falsely accused of robbery. His incarceration lasted five years, during which he began a sexual relationship with another man. Josey likes working with Weeper because Weeper intimidates people and can communicate with his eyes.

Weeper finally meets Josey at the strip club. Josey suspects that Weeper has ingested cocaine because Weeper is being paranoid. Josey assures himself that the paranoia signals Weeper’s commitment to their plans.

Weeper encountered the Singer during his incarceration. While Weeper was doing manual labor, the Singer visited to assure the incarcerated people that he was fighting for their freedom. Weeper claims he was offended that the Singer would patronize him this way, but Josey knows that the real reason for Weeper’s grudge is that the Singer wasn’t talking to Weeper directly. Josey and Weeper go to pick up Bam-Bam from their lookout.

Bam-Bam feels possessive and intimidating now that he brings his gun home. He joins Weeper, Heckle, and Demus in stealing the weapons shipment from the wharf. Later that night, Weeper tells Bam-Bam that the Rema neighborhood is aligned with the PNP and Eight Lanes. Under the influence of cocaine, they shoot up Rema to discourage its residents from supporting the PNP. Weeper stops Bam-Bam from killing or raping anyone. Bam-Bam is disappointed and yearns for violence. Papa-Lo is furious to learn about the assault; however, although Josey defies him, Papa-Lo does nothing to discipline him.

Bam-Bam and other gang members shoot up more PNP-affiliated neighborhoods in the leadup to the election. Eventually, Papa-Lo issues official orders to campaign for the JLP. The Singer organizes the Smile Jamaica Peace Concert. Some worry that it is a campaign event for the PNP. The violence emboldens Bam-Bam and the other gang members to think they are better than the Singer. Still, Bam-Bam refuses to abuse his partner, telling himself that he is only in the gang for free cocaine.

Alex writes a piece describing the atmosphere around Kingston. He is annoyed by his own sensationalism, which he knows is an excuse for his lack of material. He writes about the influence of cowboy culture on the gangs of Kingston. He adds that the current government’s attempts to address inequality and violence by adopting democratic socialism has caught the attention of the United States. This reads better, though he feels the need to ground his story in individual characters. He thinks the answer lies with William Adler.

Papa-Lo knows that some people think he is no longer capable of leading Copenhagen City. He has always been quick to quash any resistance to his authority, but lately, he worries that his loyalty to the Singer is making him complacent. He has become sensitive to the way the Singer’s influence has affected the general perception of Jamaica abroad. He also understands that peace between the gangs is difficult to achieve because their tensions benefit Jamaica’s upper classes.

For several months, Josey has been entertaining visits from JLP politician Peter Nasser (the Syrian), an American, and a Spanish-speaking white man. Worried that they are plotting against him, Papa-Lo starts monitoring Josey’s movements. He connects the wharf robbery and the Rema ambush to Josey, but Papa-Lo hasn’t been able to control Josey ever since Josey survived a shooting in 1966—an indirect result of the demolition of the Balaclava tenement, which Papa-Lo supported.

William Adler calls CIA station chief Barry at home to taunt him. Barry acts unfazed until Adler tells him that Louis Johnson is training Jamaican gunmen for an operation. Barry doesn’t know about the operation, but denies Adler’s insinuation that it is tied to the wharf robbery, the upcoming election, the Singer’s concert, or Mark Lansing’s arrival in Kingston.

While navigating their combative feelings toward one another, Barry and his wife Claire can’t help getting into an argument about their prolonged stay in Jamaica.

Nina continues to wait outside the Singer’s house after midnight, believing that uptown neighborhoods are spared from the mandatory police curfew.

She thinks about her parents’ conservative leanings, which conflict with Kimmy’s support for the PNP’s progressive policies. Nina doesn’t care much for politics; she is too busy thinking about how to get through each day while she is unemployed.

A white sportscar pulls up outside the Singer’s estate. A man climbs over a house wall nearby and enters the car.

Nina decides to hurry home. One of her heels breaks just as a police car pulls up next to her. Two policemen offer to take her home, which she refuses at first. They insist, threatening her with arrest. When she gets in, they drive in the opposite direction of Nina’s address.

The hit squad targeting the Singer is composed of ten gang members from various neighborhoods. They wait in an abandoned safehouse near the sea. One of the crew, Matic, dies from a cocaine overdose. Another crew member, Renton, is killed by Josey when he argues that hundreds of people will suffer without the Singer’s aid. Josey and Weeper leave the rest of the crew locked up in the safehouse. Demus looks forward to scaring the men he will kill.

The ghost of Jennings visits the house of his killer, Peter Nasser, while Nasser is having sex with his wife, a beauty queen.

Nasser is outraged to find that Josey has broken into his living room. Josey asks for money, but Nasser alludes to Josey’s recent trip to Miami to suggest that Josey has money. Josey reveals that Papa-Lo and Shotta Sherrif have been considering entering peace talks, trying to use this information to pressure Nasser into raising the price of the contract to kill the Singer. Nasser rejects his request.

During the conversation, Jennings sees another ghost, which entered Nasser’s home alongside Josey. The ghost is a fireman Josey killed while burning down a tenement. The fireman’s ghost repeatedly tries to strike Josey in anger.