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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 article 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 reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance 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 created to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the communities 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 a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame 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’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance 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 destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in prior to the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain 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 thrown out, any mention of fables, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.