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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was truly 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 cathartic. Social media blew up. One comment read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his communications 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 amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing 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 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”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest 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 eventually either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family 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 deceased, 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 little insight of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. 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 “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.