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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “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 numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections 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 should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to increase earnings 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 awaits trial 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 accused offense? 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 journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the groups that lurk in the dark corners 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 extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture 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 attempts to cast 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’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue 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 looks at the indication Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear 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 2021 to 2023, company earnings increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, 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 people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any mention of fables, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.