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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran 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 assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One post 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 designed to increase earnings 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 arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the issues 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 devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts 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 wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is profoundly worried 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 – “delay”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning 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, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader 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 time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.