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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. 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 designed 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 McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors 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.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups 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 wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. 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 takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, Robin Hoods, 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” facing judgment for murder.