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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published 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 killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment read: “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, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended 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 capital punishment. So what is his background? 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.

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, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns 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 taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Additionally, 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 elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid 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 “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening 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 eventually either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality 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 veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any reference of myths, folk heroes, champions 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.