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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article then noted 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 truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions 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 communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns 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 subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame 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”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance 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, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, 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 family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that tale “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 ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.