Watching Wideman work is like hearing a skilled jazz musician play. Each riff floats in the air, lingering as another is played, and the music intertwines and creates a whole out of seemingly disparate pieces. Multiple points of view, shifts in dialect, and tremendous energy propel this book.

One of Wideman's trademarks is his use of multiple narrators. In The Lynchers the points of view range from a white cop waiting to break up a rally, to Littleman rambling from his hospital bed, to Wilkerson's mundane preparation for school. Some critics find such shifts disconcerting, asserting that they call attention to the writer. It is true that this is not Wideman's smoothest book and that the changes in point of view at times seem to distract from the narrative.

Likewise, the dialect shifts call more attention to themselves than in other of Wideman's books, primarily because they are...