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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead 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 daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. 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 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 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 seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

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 “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait 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 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”, “refuse” 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 examines the indication 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 lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety 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 consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in prior to the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.