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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article 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 indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment stated: “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 designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus 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 drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews 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 sifts through his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, 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 trickster magic”. 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”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to rest 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either take control, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family 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, company earnings increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.