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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post 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 maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 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 awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as 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 symbolic roles.

Mangione is deeply anxious 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”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He looks at the evidence 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 rest 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

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, company earnings rose significantly.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents 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 “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains 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.