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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. 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 increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant 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 might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups 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 arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, 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’

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 occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media 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%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement 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 beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain 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 thrown out, any mention of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.