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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the indication Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either take control, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.