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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment stated: “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 designed 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 arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame his subject in symbolic roles.

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

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “depose”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing 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 reference of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.