This book is no chronicle!

The title of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a misnomer, if the dictionary definition of the word "chronicle" is considered. A chronicle is defined as "an historical account of events arranged in order of time usually without analysis or interpretation". Marquez's novel is not a chronicle in the conventional sense, primarily because the witness accounts of the time surrounding Santiago Nasar's murder are not in chronological order. The witness accounts are reflections of events that happened decades ago, and are told in a way that dates and times of these witness's stories are bound to overlap. The details of the accounts, especially those regarding time, are also bound to be muddled or forgotten by memory, so the novel can not be a linear chronicle. Also, Chronicle of a Death Foretold cannot be a traditional chronicle because (I'm assuming) it revolves around the narrator's interpretation and analyses of the many disorganized witness accounts in order to put the case of Santiago Nasar's murder to rest decades after it happened. A chronicle just states the facts, without interpretation.

I think Marquez used the title because the narrator is attempting organize the scattered details reported to him by the witnesses into more of a timeline, or a chronicle, so that the murder case is easier to solve. The chronicle is his first step to solving the case, then analyses and interpretation come into play.