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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to maximize profits 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 arrested 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 capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues 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 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 taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing 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 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 – “postpone”, “refuse” and “remove”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to lie 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 eventually either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media in advance of 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 rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed 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 emperor without clothes.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of myths, folk heroes, 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.