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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. 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 artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, 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 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 issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is deeply anxious 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”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the indication 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 philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating 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 take control, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking 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 the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.