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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners 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 a reading platform”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid whether we like it or not’

Interpreting the Incident

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 health insurance companies to deny coverage. He looks at the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in prior to 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%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … 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 continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.