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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. 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 AI algorithm the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. 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 archetypal terms.

Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid 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 – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; 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, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, 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 did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk 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 guidance, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense 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, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.