The central question at the core of the novella is how the death of Santiago Nasar was widely foreseen — "there had never been a death more foretold," as the narrator describes — yet no one was able or willing to stop it. The narrator explores the circumstances surrounding his death by asking the villagers who were present during his murder and exploring the seeming contradiction of a murder that was predicted. The book explores the morality of the village's collective responsibility in the murder of Santiago Nasar.
Unlike the traditional detective novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold doesn't investigate the murder, which is made clear from the first sentence. Instead, the true mystery is why the whole town allowed the murder to occur with, at best, only half-hearted attempts to stop it or even warn the victim.
Isabel Alvarez-Borland notes the text’s "conscious fictionality" and how it makes the reader aware of that, with the main character commenting on the case report's meandering literary qualities, reading old reports related to the murder in the same way as the audience reads the novella.[3]
