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On December 5, 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 killer who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: 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 artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? 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 communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “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 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”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications 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 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 ‘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 “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence 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 glaring gap is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the audience has little insight of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.