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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment stated: “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 designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-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 criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove 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 communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, 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 personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him 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 trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, 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’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “delay”, “deny” and “depose”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, 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, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family 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 deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” 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 certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of fables, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.