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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One comment stated: “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 maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “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 covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing 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 archetypal terms.

Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid 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 ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening 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 ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth 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 dismissed, any mention of fables, folk heroes, champions or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.