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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. 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 should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. 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 295 books on a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is deeply anxious 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 “depose”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating 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

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or monsters will not be allowed in court in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.