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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. 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 deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 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 the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer 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, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is profoundly worried 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”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk 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, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.